onvert into UNIMARC and one to convert from
UNIMARC - instead of having to write twenty programs for the conversion
of each MARC format (e.g. INTERMARC to UKMARC, USMARC to UKMARC etc.).

In 1977, the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions) published UNIMARC: Universal MARC Format, followed by a
second edition in 1980 and a UNIMARC Handbook in 1983. These
publications focused primarily on the cataloguing of monographs and
serials, while taking into account international efforts towards the
standardization of bibliographic information reflected in the ISBDs
(International Standard Bibliographic Descriptions).

In the mid-1980s, UNIMARC expanded to cover documents other than
monographs and serials. A new UNIMARC Manual was produced in 1987, with
an updated description of UNIMARC. By this time UNIMARC had been
adopted by several bibliographic agencies as their in-house format.

Developments didn't stop there. A standard for authorities files was
set up in 1991, as explained on the website of IFLA in 1998:
"Previously agencies had entered an author'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 item
included in the bibliographic file. The user would still see the name
in the bibliographic record, however, as the computer could import it
from the authorities file at a convenient time. So in 1991
UNIMARC/Authorities was published."

In 1991 a Permanent UNIMARC Committee was also created to regularly
monitor the development of UNIMARC. Users realized that continuous
maintenance - and not just the occasional rewriting of manuals - was
needed, to make sure all changes were compatible with what already
existed.

On top of adopting UNIMARC as a common format, The British Library
(using UKMARC), the Library of Congress (using USMARC) and the National
Library of Canada (using CAN/MARC) worked on harmonizing their national
MARC formats. A three-year program to achieve a common MARC format was
agreed on by the three libraries in December 1995.

Other libraries began using SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language)
as a common format for both the bibliographic records and the
hypertextual and multimedia documents linked to them. As most
publishers were using SGML for book re