UKMARC Format
British National Bibliography had shown active interest in the possibilities of MARC from 1966. Cooperative efforts with Aslib and OSTI within the country and with LC abroad enabled it to develop a MARC format in 1968. This format had been further improved upon in the light of the objectives and needs of British libraries. It had given special emphasis to the need for a distributed bibliographic record. There were no considerable changes in the format until the first edition of UKMARC Manual appeared in 1975. But later, the advent of BLAISE and the increased use of non-book materials in the educational field and publication of AACR-2 made it necessary to incorporate many corresponding changes in the format.
UKMARC is a single, unitary format designed to accommodate all types of material with some material specific fields. UKMARC format specifications are set out in UKMARC manual, second edition, 1980-7.