PRESERVING COMPATIBILITY WITH STANDARD DATA FORMATS

Librarians in countries without well-established national bibliographi c systems increasingly find themselves faced with the problem of estab lishing local formats for machine-readable cataloguing and for referra l data. Often they lack the background and the resources - especially trained staff either to adopt an existing MARC format or to develop th eir own. Such international formats as UNIMARC and CCF (Common Communi cation Format), despite widespread international use, present problems of their own: MARC formats are not practical for agencies that do not follow standard cataloguing rules, and CCF offers little guidance to agencies wishing to adapt it for local use. A number of techniques use ful in adapting and implementing international and national standard f ormats are presented, with some guidelines for preserving compatibilit y with standards.