Although there are many national and regional standards which facilitate the exchange of bibliographic information, there are few international standards. The standards which do exist have been designed by and for library use and have generally not been adopted by the abstracting and indexing (a&i) community. Unesco's Common Communication Format was designed as an international exchange format for both libraries and a&i agencies. It differs from established formats in not including rules for description and in its hospitality to records describing more than one entity. As bibliographic agencies begin to use it, they are directing its development, with emphasis on expanding its use for non-bibliographic databases.