Page 104 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 5: Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)

taken as strong evidence that search engine results have significantly improved over the Notes
last few years (Hock, 2007).

Out of date: The main problem faced by library classificationists was the need to issue
new editions and improvements of their respective schemes as time passed. It is one of the
barriers in development of the classification. There have been recent attempts to improve
the management of the classification and to speed up the revision process (Gilchrist, 1992).
Literary warrant: Diane used the aspect of literary warrant in favour of library classification
schemes. As she says Classes are added or revised only after sufficient literary warrant is
demonstrated and classes are removed with even greater caution (Vizine-Goetz). UDC
captions are mainly based on literary warrant and that they attempt to represent the
universe of knowledge as this is discovered by science and scholarship. Also they are
mainly “positivist” in the sense that is assumed that one way of organizing knowledge is
simply the best for all purposes and that the task of interpreting the subjects in documents
is a neutral rather than a value-based task (Hjorland, 2005). Whereas Yahoo uses its own
directory structures and new categories are added when required (Saeed and Chaudhry,
2001).
Less Exploitation: More than thousands of libraries and bibliographic services and legacy
systems are using UDC but do not fully exploit UDC.

Assumption: We assumed that UDC is a Universalist classification scheme. Universality
means that it handles all subjects with growing degree of information. While many kernels
and concepts of the main classes are missing and class 4 is vacant for new evolving classes.
Not synthetic enough: Many of the criticisms levelled at the UDC at the intellectual level
are concerned with its hierarchical structure in the main classes. Common subdivisions,
special analytical divisions and the use of the colon are not enough to make clear the
interrelationships in modern knowledge. If we now criticize the UDC, it is because its
very success encouraged new thinking and opened up the possibility of systematizing
some of the haphazard usage of its invention. Further common subdivision and further
special analytical divisions for more schedules might help, but probably would not go far
enough. For one reason or another, the UDC has not been able to keep up with these
developments. There is therefore a need to create some auxiliary tables and to revise the
UDC.

Limited number of semantic relationship: In any complex subject the signs like colon (:),
plus (+), slash (/), double apostrophes (“”) and bracket (()) used to represent interrelations
between subjects and express the concepts. These signs serve as a relator. Not many kinds
of relations are distinguished: the plus and slash represents kind of aggregation (the sum
of meanings of several UDC numbers), while the colon serves for most other relations.
When class number in UDC linked by colon, it shows that the subjects denoted by the
numbers are related to each other in some way; it does not specify which influences the
other, nor it shows the nature of the influence exerted. However it does not denote the
phase of relation. So to clarify the semantic relationship between subjects, there is need to
develop give more semantic relators.

Uneven Maintenance: Uneven maintenance is the disadvantage, which is seriously affecting
the use of UDC. It can be sort out if the new concepts are constantly added to follow the
growth of knowledge in all fields/classes. UDC uneven maintenance of the UDC causes
unequal division of the conceptual content. Uneven maintenance is one of the responsible
factors to switched BUBL and OMNI from UDC to DDC.

Accuracy: When auxiliaries and punctuation are inconsistently applied we get a code
language, which is impossible to manage with accuracy.

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