15 April 2016

Participation of a representative of the National Library at the meeting of the IFLA UNIMARC Permanent Committee

On 3–4 April, there was the meeting of the UNIMARC Permanent Committee of the International Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) at the National Library of Portugal. The Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania was represented by the Director of the Information Sciences Department Dr. Nijolė Bliūdžiuvienė, who participated at the meeting as a member of the Permanent Committee.

The IFLA UNIMARC Permanent Committee has been active since 1991 and involves permanent membership of representatives from Portugal, the USA, Italy, Russia, France, China, Slovenia and Lithuania. The Committee maintains and develops the UNIMARC format in line with the progress of information technologies, designs and implements adequate means to support it and works with IFLA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in drafting and implementing standards. The National Library of Portugal hosts the seat of the IFLA UNIMARC Permanent Committee, and the Director of this institution Maria Inês Cordeiro is the Director of the IFLA UNIMARC Strategic Programme and the Head of the IFLA UNIMARC Permanent Committee.

The agenda of the meeting of the Permanent Committee was focused on the IFLA UNIMARC Strategic Programme. The participants discussed issues regarding the improvement and representation of this format, its recent developments and the intended changes as well as discussed and approved UNIMARC updates.

Portuguese librarians and members of the IFLA UNIMARC Permanent Committee participated at the workshop conducted by the Committee’s honorary member and special advisor Mirna Willer and its independent consultant Gordon Dunsire, which introduced the vision of the UNIMARC development, unleashing it in the Semantic Web and presenting it in RDF as well as perspectives of presenting semantic metadata.

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