Page 93 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes It also appointed an Editor in Chief, Prof. I C McIlwaine, University College London, who is
assisted by a Revision Group. The member-publishers have the right to issue UDC editions in
their own languages. The rights in all English-language editions rest with BSI. The MRF has
grown to slightly over 62,000 entries (at January 2001), and is the source of standard editions of
UDC. Abridged editions (e.g., the Pocket Edition in English, PD 1000) and extended versions of
some sections are also available.

Did u know? From 2001, the standard edition in English (BS 1000) is available as UDC
Online.
The MRF is updated annually in accordance with amendments agreed during the year by the
Revision Group. The amendments are also issued as hard copy in the annual Extensions and
Corrections to the UDC, published by the UDCC. The current language of Extensions and
Corrections is English, but earlier issues also contained material in French and German. UDC
Online is updated at the beginning of each year from the latest version of the MRF.
The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is an indexing and retrieval language in the form of
a classification for the whole of recorded knowledge, in which subjects are symbolized by a code
based on Arabic numerals. It was designed by the Belgian bibliographers Paul Otlet and Henry
Lafontaine at the end of the 19th century, and has been improved and developed ever since.
The documents that embody knowledge may be in any form; they will often be literature, i.e.,
written documents, but may equally well be in any other medium: films, video and sound
recordings, illustrations, maps, and objects such as museum pieces are all suitable for classification
by UDC.

The code may be applied in two ways:
1. It may be transcribed directly on to the documents, and be used to determine their physical
arrangement - for instance, of books on shelves, of papers in a file, or of paragraphs in a
book.
2. It may be included in the references to the documents, for instance in entries in catalogues
or bibliographies.
In many systems, the two methods can usefully be combined. In this way, all information, or
references to information, about a particular subject are brought together; they can then be
located and retrieved with the minimum of searching.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
1. Dewey developed and used his scheme in the library of Amherst College, Massachusetts,
and it was published in 1976.
2. The UDCC assumed ownership of the scheme on 1 January 1982.

5.2 Main Features

UDC can be used, alike other library classifications, for simple shelf arrangement (to any arbitrary
level of specificity/complexity) but is often chosen as a tool by special libraries and bibliographic
services for its strength in detailed indexing. Since 1993 it has been regularly revised, structured,
updated and maintained by its owner (UDC Consortium).

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