The National Archives Activities
The National Archives of Iran is responsible by law to follow up on and supervise the collection and storage of stagnant and valuable documents produced by state organisations and institutions affiliated with them across the country. The execution of this complex process is carried out by five Departments, the summary of whose responsibilities are as follows:

Documents Co-ordination and Evaluation Department

Communication with relevant authorities at Ministries, government institutions and institutions affiliated with them to explain and justify its processes for the creation of document bureaus;
The correct execution of document directives and regulations;
The determination of the lifespan of documents;
The recognition of redundant documents;
Preparations for the transfer of valuable documents to the National Archives;
The conception and correction of document regulations and directives and their stipulation to government organisations and their institutional affiliates for the optimal preservation of files, timely stagnation of background files, recognition of valuable documents and separation of papers from documents;
Professional evaluation of document categories lacking destruction permits and continuous co-operation with government institutions to obtain the permits from the National Documents Council for their suggested list of documents to be destroyed.
Continuous studies on the true research and archival value of documents.

Pre-archival documents Department

The regulated acquisition of stagnant documents from government bodies and their institutional affiliates;
Devising regulations and registration forms for the optimal storage of stagnant documents received from government bodies;
Review and stratification of received dossiers and the preparation of ID labels for and abstracts of them;
Prioritisation and ranking of documents before hand-over to the Categorisation and Indexing Department;
Production of software for data transfer to digital databases for accountability to relevant bodies.

Document Classification and Indexing Department

Adjustment and description of archival documents in descriptive and analytic lists respecting globally accepted archive norms ensuring the genuine order and originality of the source; in other words, document collections are reviewed without manipulation or disruption of their original order, the main ID tag of each collection upon retrieval being the organisation or person having submitted them.
In the physical description of documents, features such as number of pages, language, alphabet, page size, date and appendices, and in content description, the subject of the document in abstract, to-the-point phrases, in the framework of the principles of summary writing, are extracted and recorded. For precise and fast retrieval, clear and decisive features of each article are selected and used.

Document Preparation and Repair Department

The repair of physical, chemical and biological damages incurred on valuable documents thanks to pathology labs, cleaning and disinfection machines and advanced tools for the physical repair of documents;
Technical, professional and advisory services for the preservation and storage of valuable archival documents at other libraries or document centres or by private collectors;
Extension of technical know-how on physical repair and protection of documents, promotion of a document-oriented culture, in the framework of professional training programmes.

Archival Services Department

Acquisition of valuable documents from third parties in the form of donations, purchases, transfers, and deposits; and their initial processing such as registration and informing the public about them;
Collation of valid historical information through studied interviews with major figures in contemporary Iranian history;
Storage of categorised documents in troves with a surface area of 4000 square metres using standard tools;
Production of photographs, microfilms, microfiches, and photocopies of original documents;
Coding, correction and recording of received data and updating of central document database;
Lending documents to researchers and information dissemination in the society, amongst other methods, by organising public exhibitions.

Regional Affairs Department

To prevent the accumulation of regional documents in the capital and facilitate the work of researchers, and in order to improve the collation processes of local documents, archival bureaus have been set up in different parts of the country with same terms of reference as the National Archives. The following regional bureaus are already operational while preparatory work is underway to open new bureaus in more Provinces of Iran:
1. Regional archive of the south-east centred in Kerman;
2. Regional archive of the north-west centred in Tabriz;
3. Regional archive of the west centred in Hamedan;
4. Regional archive of the east centred in Zahedan;
5. Regional archive of the centre located in Isfahan;
6. Archive of Yazd Province.