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This article focuses on the UNESCO-sponsored 1971 Intergovernmental Conference for the Establishment of a World Science Information System (UNISIST) and the 1974 Intergovernmental Conference on the Planning of National Documentation, Library and Archive Infrastructures (NATIS) and the events, often themselves international and intergovernmental conferences, leading to them in association with IFLA (especially its Universal Bibliographic Control program), the International Federation for Documentation and International Council of Scientific Unions, and its Abstracting Board. It notes the disappearance of these programs and their approach to a coherent, cooperative global information system. It argues that this was a result of geopolitical developments, organizational changes within UNESCO and its related organizations, and the rapid evolution of huge competitive commercial enterprises. These have been responsible for both developing and exploiting the transformative digital technologies that are now associated with owning increasingly complex information systems and services, and selling access to them in what has become a global, borderless marketplace for information as a commodity.
