UNIMARC (UNIversal MARC) is a set of international standards for creating and formatting bibliographic records for library materials. It is similar to USMARC, but it is designed to be more widely applicable across different languages and scripts, and it includes additional data elements and codes to support the cataloging of non-Western materials. UNIMARC was developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it is widely used by libraries in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The UNIMARC format includes a set of data elements, such as title, author, publication date, and subject headings, that are used to describe the resource. It also includes a set of rules for how the data elements should be organized and formatted, so that the information can be easily understood by both humans and computer systems. UNIMARC format is divided into three main parts: the leader, the directory, and the variable fields. The leader contains information about the bibliographic record, such as its length and the type of resource it describes. The directory contains information about the location of the variable fields within the record. The variable fields contain the actual data elements of the bibliographic record, such as the title, author, publication date, and subject headings.
UNIMARC is widely used in libraries all over the world, especially outside the US and Canada, and it is one of the most common formats for bibliographic records in many countries. However, like USMARC, UNIMARC is being replaced by other formats such as RDF, BIBFRAME and schema.org in order to increase the interoperability of data and make it more easily shareable and discoverable online.