IFLA Core Activity: IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)

The National Library of Australia, the Library of Congress, The British Library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek have agreed to participate in a joint alliance together with the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, IFLA and CDNL to assure on going coordination, communication and support for key activities in the areas of bibliographic and resource control for all types of resources and related format and protocol standards. This new alliance is known as "IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS)."

The focus of the alliance is strategic and offers a practical way to improve international coordination and to steer developments in these key areas. The alliance aims to maintain, promote, and harmonize existing standards and concepts related to bibliographic and resource control, to develop strategies for bibliographic and resource control, and to advance understanding of issues related to long-term archiving of electronic resources, including the promotion of new and recommended conventions for such archiving. More specifically, the objectives of this new alliance are

1) To coordinate activities aimed at the development of standards and practices for bibliographic and resource control, including metadata, persistent identifiers, and interoperability standards

2) To support the international exchange of bibliographic resources by supporting, promoting, developing, and testing the maintenance of metadata and format standards

3) To ensure the promotion of new conventions

4) To act as a clearinghouse for information on all IFLA endeavours in these fields

5) To organize and participate in seminars and workshops

6) To enhance communication within the community.

Source: IFLANET

In 2003 the UBCIM core activity was closed and the coordination of bibliographic standardization was moved to the IFLA - CDNL Alliance for Bibliographic Standards (ICABS), which was later changed to the IFLA-CDNL Alliance for Digital Strategies (ICADS). In 2011 it was decided to discontinue ICADS. During the 2011 WLIC conference the idea arose of revitalizing UBC and the Bibliography Section took on this task. 

Source: http://www.ifla.org/publications/ifla-professional-statement-on-ubc