A different approach to Universal Decimal Classification in a Mechanized Retrieval System

Abstract

UDC is one of the world's foremost classification systems having been published in around forty languages and used in more than 120 countries worldwide. This prevalence is partially due to its having been invented more than one hundred years ago and its having been under continuous review since then in order to ensure that it constantly reflects the current status of the sciences and human knowledge. The other key to its popularity is its analiticosynthetic and faceted nature; in addition to attempting to collect and organize all branches of human knowledge in a hierarchical structure it provides a system of auxiliaries in order to create new concepts by joining existing ones. However, library software still cannot employ it perfectly. The three main solutions currently used to utilize UDC in information retrieval systems are: handling UDC notations as text strings, compiling a so-called KWOC-index of the parts of complex concepts and using an authority control function to manage the classification vocabulary. Neverthless, further improvements may result in a further increase in the effectiveness of bibliographic analysis and information retrieval by taking advantage of the characteristics of UDC. The first step to doing this is to implement a software interpreter to analyze UDC numbers. The goal of this paper is to present a program written for this purpose.

Bibliographic Classification in the Digital Age: Current Trends & Future Directions

“…DDC's rules and principles are comprehensive and complete (Press, 2002) and easier than those of CC and LCC. UDC is also easy to understand and implement (Piros, 2014). ACM, IEEE, and DMOZ are simple to use and understand, and therefore, bears no such complexity.…”