UNIMARC

[pkiraly]

The UNIMARC [1] bibliographic format was first created and proposed by IFLA in 1977, with the title UNIMARC: Universal MARC format. The intention of the standard was to unify different MARC versions into a single schema (note: MARC21 had the same intention). It was updated several times, the current version is the 3rd edition. As for MARC21, there are bibliographic, authorities, classification and holdings sub-schemas. UNIMARC records are serialised in ISO 2709 (which is the basis of all MARC versions) and XML. It is in use in France, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraina, Belarus, Russia. There is no machine readable version of the schema.

Research questions and tasks (Computer Science):

• Write scripts which download UNIMARC records from the data sources via OAI-PMH and Z39.50 protocols. The scripts should handle the shortcomings of these protocols and the actual implementations.
• Create a machine readable UNIMARC schema, either as a set of Java classes according to the QA catalogue's MARC definition structure or to the JSON based Avram schema [2]. It is also possible to implement it with other technology which can be exported into Avram schema.
• Modify the QA catalogue backend to be able to use the above mentioned definition as an input configuration for the quality assessment processes.
• Adopt the user interface of QA catalogue to work with the output of the analysis.

Research questions and tasks (LIS / Humanities):

• How has the UNIMARC schema changed historically? How to match the proper schema with the records?
• Are there locally defined data elements in particular libraries? Are these documented? How could they be transformed as an input to QA catalogue, so it should understand them and apply the rules during the analyses?
• Literature scan: are there specific papers regarding UNIMARC quality assessment? Are the specific aspects of the structure or the content of the schema which are not available in MARC21 schema?
• Communicate with the institutions that provide the data sources and collect feedback. How could they use the report in daily work? Are there relevant needs which the report doesn’t fulfil? What are their data life cycles and relevant workflow, and how QA catalogue could be inserted into it?

Potential partners:

• Agence bibliographique de l'emseignement supérieur (ABES [3]), Montpellier, France, the maintainer of SUDOC, [4] the French union catalogue of academic libraries
• Institut informacijskih znanosti (IZUM), Maribor, Slovenia, the maintainer of COBISS+, the Slovenian union catalogue
• Portugal National Library
• Italian National Library, Firenze

Data sources:

• SUDOC (from ABES)
• Portugal National Library
• COBISS+, the virtual library of Slovenia, one-stop access to information from 919 Slovenian libraries
• Italian National Library, Firenze [5]
• The catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France [6]

[1] https://www.ifla.org/publications/unimarc-formats-and-related-documentation/
[2] https://format.gbv.de/schema/avram/specification
[3] http://abes.fr/
[4] http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/cbs/
[5] The data is available via Z39.50, but with limited download options
[6] The datasets are downloadable from the pef.bnf.fr FTP server in UNIMARC and INTERMARC format, which is the internal metadata schema of Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Tasks:

• Import machine readable UNIMARC schema #305
• fetching the actual version of machine readable UNIMARC schema #306
• parsing machine readable UNIMARC and creating a schema object #307
• Validate UNIMARC records #406
• Implement completeness for UNIMARC #421