ISO 20775:2009 specifies a schema designed to cover the holdings of all types of resources, physical and electronic, all types of resource format such as printed text, visual images, sound recordings, videos, electronic media and resources published or issued once such as monographs or those published serially or in part.

Though it is designed to be used as a schema in query responses, ISO 20775:2009 does not specify a query and response (such as SRU, Z39.50 or Open Search) including search attributes and index definition.

ISO 20775:2009 facilitates the interactive exchange of a combination of stable and dynamic information.

How data is gathered and assembled to populate the schema for holdings is outside the scope of ISO 20775:2009.

Detailed resource description is outside the scope of ISO 20775:2009 as is also detailed information on serials designed for claiming missing issues.