OZ 2014/2

60 ORGANIZACIJA ZNANJA 2014, LETN. 19, ZV. 2 Nadia Karachodjukova St. St. Cyril and Methodius National Library, Sofia E-mail address: n.karachodjukova @ nation- allibrary.bg introduction The automation of libraries in Bulgaria started with a considerable delay. The first steps in this direction were made under financial constraints imposed on libraries and in the absence of a consistent national policy in this respect. The renewal of library technologies in the ear- ly 1990s relied solely on extra-budgetary support from foundations and other non-governmental organisations whose goal was the overall development of IT infrastruc- ture in the country. That is why individual libraries made different decisions about their automation based on their opportunities and capabilities. Despite this fact, library experts discussed the adoption of a unified communication format. After analysing and comparing the formats from the MARC family it was concluded that the UNIMARC format was appropriate because of the following reasons: • The UNIMARC format was developed by IFLA's Pro- THE improvement OF the COMARC format AS A RESULT OF the EXPANDING COBISS.NET network Abstract The article describes the process of library automation in the Bulgarian National Library and the conversion of the records in their databases into the COMARC format and lists the reasons why COBISS software was chosen by the National Library of Bulgaria and other Bulgarian libraries. It also mentions the need to expand the COMARC format due to countries with different cataloguing practices participating in the COBISS.Net project. Keywords library automation, cataloguing, COMARC Izvle~ek Prispevek opisuje postopek avtomatizacije v Nacionalni knjižnici Bolgarije in konverzijo njenih zapisov v format COMARC ter navaja razloge, zakaj je Nacionalna knjižnica Bolgarije skupaj z drugimi bolgarskimi knjižnicami izbrala programsko opremo COBISS, ter omenja potrebo po raz- širitvi formata COMARC zaradi sodelovanja držav z različnimi katalogizacijskimi pravili v mreži COBISS.Net. Klju~ne besede avtomatizacija knjižnic, katalogizacija, COMARC The article is based on the presentation with the title Enhancement of COMARC as a result of expanding COBISS.Net given at the international conference UNIMARC 2014: 4th UNIMARC Users' Group Meeting in Maribor, Slovenia, on 14 May 2014. gramme for UBC and approved by The Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) as the primary format for exchange of machine-readable bibliographic data between national bibliographic agencies. • Originally, UNIMARC was created for the exchange of records created according to different national ca- taloguing rules. The variety of rules implies a lower degree of standardisation in UNIMARC than in MARC21, which is oriented towards specific rules, used in an English-speaking environment for creating records in English. • It was developed systematically and did not rely on old practices such as MARC21. • Due to the fractional segmentation of data, libraries using UNIMARC can convert records into MARC21, whereas the reverse conversion is not so successful. For example, it is the fractional segmentation of data in the format that makes it possible for punctuation to be automatically generated as required by the International Standard Bibliographic Description. This is definitely one of the benefits of the UNIMARC format. doi:10.3359/oz1402060 1.04: STROKOVNI ČLANEK