UNIMARC – Understanding the past to envision the future

Abstract

The context of major changes that are envisaged for the bibliographic standards environment demands a reflection on the nature and specification of MARC and its adequacy for the integration of bibliographic discovery systems into the larger world of networked information and systems. From this starting point, this paper provides an overview of the evolution of UNIMARC and the practices of its maintenance, collecting knowledge that may be useful as a first contribution to inform future steps in redesigning bibliographic data standards.