The process of developing standards for archival description started, at the end of the eighties, on the initiative of the International Archives Council that appointed an ad hoc Commission for descriptive standards in 1989. During the first half of the nineties the Commission produced the two final documents: the first –  the International Standard of Archival Description (General) (ISAD [G]) – showed the basic principles of archival description, the second standard was the International Standard Archival Authority Record (Corporate Bodies, Persons, Families), for the implementation of authority files for creators of archives. In this paper I will try and relate the new features in the latest edition of ISAAR (CPF), before that, I will expound what ISAAR (CPF) has meant and means for the international archival community.