Practical experiences of resource sharing activities in the Islamic Consultative Assembly Library (ICAL)

Resource sharing is a concept which includes many cooperative activities between libraries and other information centers. Advent of IT and ICT’s have opened up new opportunities for greater cooperation. So digital interactions, collaborative approaches to digital repositories, providing Content Consortiums and other practical experiences for sharing resources are promising development in the recent years. Nowadays, the Islamic Consultative Assembly Library (ICAL) is participating in the Iranian Consortium of National Content (ICNC) which is trying to prepare an appropriate access to digital resources for all members in national and even international level. On the other hand, the Digital Parliamentary library of Iran, known as "RASAN", provides the users with the digital images of more than half of the ICAL manuscripts. The numbers of digital images are rapidly increasing. This paper introduces practical experiences of some important resource sharing activities in the Islamic Consultative Assembly Library (ICAL) by focusing on digital activities and the Iranian Consortium of National Content (ICNC).