This paper describes the history and role of the UNIMARC bibliographic data formats, as background to a discussion of preliminary outcomes of a project to represent the formats in Resource Description Framework and map them to related standards, including the International Standard Bibliographic Description. These include the testing of the strategy for namespace and URI design and the methodology for populating them with content, identification of alignment inconsistencies, and preliminary mappings to Dublin Core, RDA: resource description and access, and MARC 21. The paper discusses the relevance of these standards to the aims of universal bibliographic control and user-focused applications in the Semantic Web.