FORMAT 

In the Unisist reference manual 'a (machine readable) bibliographic record is defined as a collection of information which pertains to a single document and which is stored in machine readable form as a self contained and unique logical structure'. 

A machine-readable bibliographic record is arranged according to a particular format. Format conveys the notion of a formalized framework or structure, which will hold records of varying content according to certain set of rules or conventions controlling the representation of the data. These rules may he unique to a system, or shared with other systems.