Page 94 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 5: Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)

It plays an important role in forming the effective and efficient use of UDC on Internet. Merits Notes
and demerits all is based on the features. Following are the special features of the UDC.

Enumerative Scheme: UDC is almost an enumerative scheme. It has a large schedule of
enumerated subjects. It has various subdivisions and table, so it is easy to give the class
number to any complex subject. It is easy for UDC to accommodate the newly emerging
compound subject or any discipline/sub-discipline.
Standard Scheme: It is a standard scheme and is not a system optimized to any particular
collection, domain or user group, but it is economic to use for libraries as well as for
WWW. It is used by different types of libraries in different countries around the world,
and fulfils the needs of its users.
Synthetic Devices: The need for synthesis to give manageable schedules at the time as a
power to specify new composite subjects in detail implies in equal need for analysis.

Notation: Notation is an artificial indexing language. UDC uses Arabic numerals as a
notation and arranged the numbers in decimal fractions. For example in the UDC database
the 8 digit number 61425384 becomes 614.253.84 (medical confidentiality), which is more
manageable. Symbols used for UDC notation are non-language dependent and consist of
Arabic numerals, a few familiar mathematical symbols, and common marks of punctuation.
According to Lois Mai Chan et al.: “There has been a renewed interest in using subject
categorization of hierarchical structures to organize directories for more efficient knowledge
discovery and retrieval. And, there is an equally obvious and pressing need for programmes
that can accommodate multiple languages (Chan, Lois Mai et al., 2000)”
Universal Scheme: UDC contained the universe of knowledge in it. Its classes reflect all the
areas of specialized knowledge developed in society. All these specialized areas are put
together in 10 main classes. 30 countries maintained their national bibliographies that are
organized by UDC.

Mnemonics: UDC has one of the other important feature mnemonics, which means, “aid to
memory”, which is for the subject synthesis. There are lots of tables such as Area table,
Language table, and Standard division table etc., which are achieved to use subject synthesis.
Auxiliary Tables: Auxiliary tables are of the greatest strength of the UDC, because it
constructs the great specificity of expressions through synthesis. It has two auxiliary tables:
common auxiliaries and special auxiliaries. Table 5.1 is showing common auxiliaries of
UDC. Common auxiliaries is used to express the interrelations between subjects and
applicable throughout the main tables. Special auxiliaries are special and do not have
extensive applicability. The hyphen series -1/-9, the point enough series .01/. 09 and the
apostrophe’s series ‘1/‘9 are three main kind of special auxiliaries.
Table 5.1: Common Auxiliary Table

Contd....

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 89