UNIMARC was originally designed to be a switching format to enable the wider exchange of bibliographic data. UNIMARC has been developed by a number of countries to become a production format. It has also been used by UNESCO for its library products, mainly to help developing countries move to automated library management systems and standard data formats. UNIMARC currently consists of a set of four formats:

  • Bibliographic
  • Authorities
  • Classification
  • Holdings

The current maintenance agency for UNIMARC is the National Library of Portugal