International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)

Maintained by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Cataloguing Section and ISBD Review Group.

ISBD is a standard from IFLA designed to make bibliographic description more consistent across a wide range of applications. It serves two distinct functions: to define the selection and order of data elements to be recorded, and to prescribe punctuation to be used inside a bibliographic description. ISBD is divided into 8 "areas" of description: title and statement of responsibility; edition; material or type of resource specific; publication, production, distribution, etc; physical description; series; note; and resource identifier and terms of availability. The structure of AACR2 is strongly informed by the ISBD areas of information.

The consolidated edition merges the texts of the seven specialized ISBDs (for books, maps, serials, sound recordings, computer files and other electronic resources, etc.) into a single text.