UNIMARC

Understanding the UNIMARC format 1. What is MARC ? MARC is an acronym for Machine Readable Catalogue or Cataloguing. This general description, however, is rather misleading as MARC is neither a kind of catalogue nor a method of cataloguing. In fact, MARC is a short and convenient term for assigning labels to each part of a catalogue record so that it can be handled by computers. While the MARC format was primarily designed to serve the needs of libraries, the concept has since been embraced by the wider information community as a convenient way of storing and exchanging bibliographic data. The original MARC format was developed at the Library of Congress in 1965-6 leading to a pilot project, known as MARC I, which had the aim of investigating the feasibility of producing catalogue data in machine-readable form. Similar work was in progress in the United Kingdom where the Council of the British National Bibliography had set up the BNB MARC Project with the remit of examining the use of machine-readable data in producing the printed British National Bibliography (BNB). These parallel developments led to Anglo-American cooperation on the MARC II project which was initiated in 1968. MARC II was to prove instrumental in defining the concept of MARC as a communication format. MARC II established certain principles which have been followed consistently over the years. In general terms, the MARC communication format is intended to be: Hospitable to all kinds of library materials Sufficiently flexible for a variety of applications in addition to catalogue production Usable in a range of automated systems Despite cooperation there emerged several versions, e.g. UKMARC, INTERMARC and USMARC, whose paths diverged owing to different national cataloguing practices and requirements. Since the early 1970s an extended family of more than 20 MARC formats has grown up. Differences in data content means that editing is required before records can be exchanged. One solution to the problem of incompatibility was to create an international MARC format (UNIMARC) which would accept records created in any MARC format. So records in one MARC format could be converted into UNIMARC and then be converted into another MARC format. The intention was that each national agency would need to write only two programs - one to convert into 1 of 15 UNIMARC and one to convert from UNIMARC - instead of one program for each other MARC format, e.g. INTERMARC to UKMARC, USMARC to UKMARC etc. So in 1977 the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutes (IFLA) published UNIMARC : Universal MARC format, stating that "The primary purpose of UNIMARC is to facilitate the international exchange of data in machine-readable form between national bibliographic agencies". This was followed by a second edition in 1980 and a UNIMARC Handbook in 1983. All focussed primarily on the cataloguing of monographs and serials and took advantage of international progress towards the standardisation of bibliographic information reflected in the International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions (ISBDs). In the mid-1980s it was seen necessary to expand UNIMARC to cover documents other than monographs and serials. So a new description of the format - the UNIMARC Manual - was produced in 1987. By this time UNIMARC had been adopted by several bibliographic agencies as their in-house format. So the statement of purpose was amended to include "UNIMARC may also be used as a model for the development of new machine-readable bibliographic formats". Developments did not stop there. Increasingly a new kind of format - an authorities format - was used. Previously agencies had entered an author& 39;s name into the bibliographic format as many times as there were documents associated with him or her. With the new system they created a single authoritative form of the name (with references) in the authorities file; the record control number for this name was the only ite