This International Standard specifies the requirements for a generalized exchange format which will hold records describing all forms of material capable of bibliographic description as well as other types of records. It does not define the length or the content of individual records and does not assign any meaning to tags, indicators or identifiers, these specifications being the functions of an implementation format.

This International Standard describes a generalized structure, a framework designed specially for communications between data processing systems and not for use as a processing format within systems.