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Thesis for Masters Degree Merit & Demerit of using Universal Decimal Classification on the Internet Amina Kaosar Master Programme in Library and Information Science The Royal School of Library and Information Science Denmark May 2008

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Thesis for Masters Degree

Merit & Demerit of using Universal Decimal

Classification on the Internet

Amina Kaosar

Master Programme in Library and Information Science

The Royal School of Library and Information Science

Denmark

May 2008

Merits and Demerits of using Universal Decimal Classification on

Internet

Advisor: Birger Hjørland

By

Amina Kaosar

Master Programme in Library and Information Science

The Royal School of Library and Information Science Denmark

A thesis submitted to the faculty of the Royal School of Library

and information Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master programme in Library and Information

science.

Copenhagen, Denmark

May 2008

Approved by

Thesis Advisor Professor Birger Hjørland

To my family and friends

for their invaluable love and support

ii

Abstract

Internet is one of the global repositories of information, which gives

many possibilities for librarians and information providers to seek information.

Information retrieval in the World Wide Web (WWW) remains a baffling

challenge despite the development of so many search engines and Meta search

engines. Library classification schemes have been devised with the aim of

organizing the collection to make the retrieval easier, effective and efficient.

As there is a shift in the focus of libraries the role of classification schemes are

also changing.

In the online environment, a faceted classification has a distinct

advantage over an enumerative one in the kind of search strategies it

empowers as well as in expert system applications making use of the synthesis

and decomposition of class numbers. As we know that Universal Decimal

Classification is a combination of facet analysis and enumerative scheme. So I

believe, Universal Decimal classification can perform better than other

schemes like (Dewey Decimal Classification, Colon Classification, Bliss

Classification) because these schemes are only facet analysis or enumerative

schemes. In this thesis Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) approach is

discussed and the arguments for and against using UDC on the Internet is

examined.

The analytical and empirical methods have been used to discuss the

paper. This thesis tries to delineate Universal Decimal Classification (UDC),

the use of UDC, it is features and analyze the merits and demerits of UDC on

Internet. We do the empirical study with domain of “Medicine, General and

Internal” to check the suitability and efficiency of the UDC in respect to

classify the knowledge of Web sources. We as well analyze that if it is more

iii

suitable to use then what are the requirements to make it more efficient for the

classification of chaotic knowledge of Web.

The past hundred years have seen the progress of numerous systems

for the structured representation of knowledge and information, including

hierarchical classification systems with notation as well as alphabetical

indexing systems with sophisticated features for the representation of term

relationships. The reasons for the lack of extensive adoption of these systems

are discussed. The suggested structure for indexing the Internet or other large

electronic collections of documents is based on that of book indexes: specific

headings with coined modifications.

iv

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to many people who have

enriched not only my research experience, but also this important period in my

life. First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my thesis advisor,

Professor Birger Hjørland, for his continuous support, guidance and

encouragement during the entire course of my MS studies, and would like to

thank him in advance for all his future advice.

Furthermore, I would like to thank affiliated faculty members of

Information Science Department for two great years Professors Peter

Ingwersen, Birger Larsen, Jack Anderson, Michael Kristiansson and Trine

Schreiber for their invaluable comments during the regular Lectures and

Workshops. I would also thank my friends in the department and in the school.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family and relatives,

whose love, support and encouragement have accompanied me throughout my

life. They supported me in every feasible way and in every single moment

during these years and they were always beside me although they were so

many thousand miles away. Words alone can never express my gratitude.

v

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgement ................................................................................... iv

Table of Contents ....................................................................................... v

List of Tables .............................................................................................. vi

1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research Background ....................................................................... 1

1.2 Motivation and Objectives................................................................ 2

1.3 Methodology ..................................................................................... 5

1.4 Thesis Organization .......................................................................... 6

2. Universal Decimal Classification ......................................... 7 2.1 Introduction ....................................................................................... 7

2.2 Features ........................................................................................... 10

2.3 Merits and Demerits........................................................................ 13

2.3.1 Merits .............................................................................................. 13

2.3.2 Demerits .......................................................................................... 19

2.4 Summary ......................................................................................... 23

3. Theoretical Analysis .................................................................. 24 3.1 Universal decimal classification on Internet .................................. 26

3.2 Requirement of KOS for digital services ....................................... 31

3.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 33

4. Description of applied Methods and analysis .............. 34 4.1 Application of Methods .................................................................. 35

4.2 Analysis ........................................................................................... 35

4.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................... 45

5. Conclusion and Future Work ................................................ 46

Abbreviations ............................................................................................. 50

Bibliography ............................................................................................... 52

vi

List of Tables

1. UDC main classes…………………………………………………….……8

2. Common auxiliary table………………………………………………….12

3. Hierarchical structure…………………………………………………….15

4. Name of websites used UDC to classify information …………………….29

5. Current status of UDC based websites………………………...…………..30

6. Class number of JAMA articles through UDC……………………………39

7. Class number of LANCET articles through UDC..........………………….40

C h a p t e r 1

1. Introduction

1.1 Research Background

Classification is the term, which involved in our daily life knowingly

or unknowingly. Classification is the process of organizing system of like

things together. According to Hunter (2002), “wherever one looks, examples

of the use of classification can be found.” In post Vedic India, the Hindu

society was divided in four varnas, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Shudra

according to their social standing in marital and occupational matters. The

procedure necessary in forming groups is called classifying and the result is a

classification. It may be interesting to note the example of the vegetable seller.

He separate vegetables by type, shape and size and keep them in different

baskets and shelves. Clearly, he recognizes that the “classification lies at the

base of every well managed life and occupation” (Maltby, 1975).

In Library Science, the term “classification” is the activity of creating

categories to which bibliographic items of all kinds may be placed and also the

activity of identifying bibliographic items in terms of the categories already

extent in a given system. It encompasses system for arranging items on the

shelves of libraries, as well as systems for arranging the surrogates of items in

catalogs. It includes classificatory systems based on all kinds of item

characteristics (subject, form, author, citation, size, etc.), in all forms of order

(logical and systematic, alphabetical, faceted, etc.), with all kinds of operating

methods (pre-coordinated and post-coordinated, statistically based clustering

and identification, etc.), and differing in scope from the universal to the very

narrow (Miksa, 1998).

2

The two basics purpose for the classification scheme is: to provide a

method of arrangement books on library shelves in an order, which would be

helpful to the users, and to provide a method of arranging surrogates of the

books themselves in a catalogue to facilitate the finding of information,

concerned with saving time. Both of these need still exists, but in recent years

tendency has been to concentrate on the second for a number of reasons

(Foskett, 1973).

Universal decimal classification (UDC) is one traditional

bibliographical classification scheme. UDC began as a mixture between the

very largely enumerative scheme of Dewey and the type of synthetic scheme

Colon classification to be developed by Ranganathan. The original concept of

the UDC as an indexing language appropriate for the arrangement of a vast

bibliographical listing is an important…(McIlwaine, 2000). It is one of the

classification schemes, which is not primarily designed as a tool for the

ordering of books in the shelves. Finally, library classification embraces a

wide range of purposes, although most often its chief purpose has been to

facilitate document retrieval (Miksa, 1998).

1.2 Motivation and Objectives

To organize the knowledge is a fundamental role of library and

information science. We have many ways to organise the scattered and

exponentially growing uncontrolled knowledge by using classification

schemes, bibliographic tools and other methods. Classification schemes are

facing increasing challenges due to the ability of computer systems to perform

massive searches of electronic full text database in an effort to find related

material and present it in an organized fashion to the searcher (Loose, 1995).

Traditional classification schemes are UDC, DDC and LC. These are used to

classify the knowledge of institutes/ libraries as well as of web. The value of

3

classification has also been recognized as significant in the digital and

networked environment (Koch et al., 1997; Hodge, 2000; Currier & Wake,

2001; McGuinness, 2003 etc.).

Another scheme derived by S.R.Ranganathan to classify the

knowledge is colon classification system; it is used in most of the libraries of

India. Facet analysis is a method of colon classification, which is also known

as analytico synthesis method. It is argued that the underlying philosophy of

facet analysis is better suited to the disparate nature of WWW resources and

searchers than the assumptions of contemporary Information retrieval research

(Ellis, 1999).

UDC is a combination of enumerative and facet analytic approach. It is

a highly flexible and effective system for organizing bibliographic records for

all kinds of information in any medium (it is well suited to multi-media

information collections). I believe that if some more of the part of facet

analysis is combined with the UDC scheme then it could perform better to

organise the knowledge of web. In this paper the main objective of the study is

to investigate that is it possible to classify well the knowledge of Web through

Universal decimal classification scheme. We discuss about the Universal

Decimal Classification (UDC) approach and examine the arguments for

and against of using the UDC on the Internet. We will see the efficiency of

UDC with respect to MEDLINE by classifying the articles of highest impact

factor journal of domain “Medicine, General and Internal”. In UDC discipline

Medicine is a special case and was given careful consideration and attention in

1993. It has been revised thoroughly and was completed by 1999 and

represents a completely new classification for medicine. It would be important

to see, how many users are using UDC and why they are continuing to UDC

instead of others, and some services (Bulletin Board for Libraries) have been

switched over to other classification schemes like DDC. We as well analyze

4

that if it is more suitable to use the some more aspects of colon classification

scheme to increase the facet flexibility to organise the uncontrolled knowledge

of web. In the online environment, a faceted classification has a distinct

advantage over an enumerative one in the kind of search strategies it

empowers as well as in expert system applications making use of the synthesis

and decomposition of class numbers.

Walt (1997) highlighted the advantages of library classification

schemes for organisation of information resources in the Web environment.

According to Walt, the knowledge organisation tools developed and used by

Web search engines often feature shallow hierarchies and uneven coverage of

topics. On the other hand, Web search engines often respond to popular topics

more quickly than traditional library knowledge organisation tools. Several

Commentators see the UDC as a particularly useful starting point for

organizing Web resources (Newton, 2000). This is based on the international

emphasis that is a future of the scheme and the fact that the machine-readable

format of the scheme is widely accessible to Internet developers (McIlwaine,

1995).

UDC is the enumerative and analytico synthetic scheme and one of the

oldest traditional approaches of knowledge Organisation but is still very

popular. UDC is in worldwide use, and has been published in whole or in part

in 23 different languages. The English-language editions are extensively used

both in Anglophone countries and those where English is co-official or a

working language (the British Isles, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India,

several African countries) and have a significant presence in other cultures as

well (http://www.udcc.org/).

We will examine the merits and demerits of UDC to organise the

knowledge on web. A number of websites have indeed applied library

classification schemes and controlled vocabularies to manage Internet

5

resources (Mckiernan, 2000) and their popularity indicates their potential for

facilitating information retrieval for electronic resources (Koch, 2000). We

could say that most of the sites, which are organizing by the classification

schemes, are using UDC scheme in good number.

The study will contribute to the literature from a theoretical, empirical

and methodological way and provide the better understanding of use of UDC

on Internet.

1.3 Methodology

Our project is an analysis of Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)

with respect to its use on Internet. In this thesis UDC used as a primary

source. Described UDC and then discuss the features, advantages and

disadvantages of the use of UDC. The ideas behind the development of UDC

since its formation are separately investigated. The study is based on the

arguments put forward based on its relation to the pertinent literature and

readings of philosophers and knowledge organisation practitioners. The main

emphasis of our project is on analysis that’s why we read about the UDC as

well as about the other traditional classification schemes.

Information obtained from UDC distributors/ publishers (AENOR, BSI

and UDC Consortium). I studied the Web Universal decimal classification

(UDC portal) to understand the electronic version of UDC. I analysed the

similarities and differences between classification schemes, which are being

used to organise the knowledge on the Internet. The descriptive approach is

adopted for study with a lot of text-based argumentation from the relevant

literature to support the argument and the knowledge claims. The extensive

literature review was conducted to collect the relevant literature. The main

emphasis is to analyse merits and demerits of UDC on Internet and is this

scheme good enough to perform the classification of Internet and furthermore

6

the ways to improve its performance are studied. The analysis of articles has

enabled us to point out various implications of the UDC on Internet. The data

for empirical investigation is collected from MEDLINE, and DIALOG and we

will discuss in detail in chapter 4. In this study, it was found important to

further the understanding of UDC system and their applications on Internet.

1.4 Thesis Organization

The problems that are considered in this thesis are organized as

follows:

In chapter 2 we present an overview of UDC. Firstly describe the UDC

system through out this thesis. Later in this chapter study the application,

characteristics merits and demerits of UDC system to be tackled in the

following chapters of the thesis.

In chapter 3 we focus on the characteristics of UDC and Use of

Universal Decimal Classification on Internet. We analyse the Universal

decimal classification scheme to organize the web. We as well analyse the 11

subject gateways, those used the UDC for their organization on the Web and

why few of the subject gateways switch over towards other traditional

bibliographic classification schemes. Requirement of Knowledge organisation

system for digital services is also discussed in it.

In chapter 4 we describe the applied method and analysis which shows

the efficiency of UDC with MEDLINE in organizing the articles of

“Medicine, General and Internal” from highest impact factor journals.

In chapter 5 we summarize the contribution of this thesis and present

some directions of the future study.

7

C h a p t e r 2

2. Universal Decimal Classification

2.1 Introduction

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a system of library

classification developed by the Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet and Henri La

Fontaine in 1904. Otlet and Fontaine made UDC based foundation was the

DDC with the permission of Melwil Dewey. While Dewey has basically

developed his scheme for the arrangement of books on shelves and Otlet and

Fontaine were interested in the arrangement of Journal articles, news item, and

other related documents and how to access them. UDC is designed to index

and retrieve highly technical information and is well suited to indexing non-

traditional media. The product can index multi-media collections, motion

pictures, map collections, art collections and web-based directories of learning

resources (http://www.udcc.org/). It was first published in French called

“Manuel du repertoire bibliographique universal” and the first edition was

later known as UDC. It comprised 33000 divisions in the schedule with an

alphabetical index of some 38000 entries (Lloyd, 1977). The preparation and

the publication of the English version of UDC as BS 1000 was at the original

joint request of the British Society for International Bibliography (BSIB) and

the Association of Special libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB), now

amalgamated as Aslib, the Association for Information Management (British

Standard Institution, 2005).

UDC schedules available in the electronic format known as UDC

Master Reference File (UDCMRF). The first published version in hard copy

based on this file was that issued by the British Standard Institution in 1993

8

(BSI, 1993). It is standard version of UDC and owned by UDC Consortium.

Derived from the Master Reference File (MRF) from the UDC Consortium,

UDC standard edition, 2005 is newly revised Complete Edition, containing all

available references and classifications. UDC Complete Edition contains over

65,000 entries, in two volumes. UDC contains over 56,000 Main numbers and

over 13,000 Common auxiliaries UDC is less North American and Western

European in focus in use. Universal Decimal Classification in English is now

available as an online product.

Universal Decimal Classification is hybrid of two schemes

(enumerative and analytico synthetic) and it shows in its structure. So it has

two kinds of tables: main and auxiliaries. Universal Decimal Classification is

comprised of 10 main classes. One class 4 is vacant now, since class 4 was

Number Caption

0 Generalities

1 Philosophy & Psychology

2 Religion & Theology

3 Social Science

4 Under development

5 Mathematics and Natural Science

6 Applied sciences. Medicine. Technology

7 The arts. Recreation. Entertainment. Sport

8 Language. Linguistics. Literature

9 Geography. Biography. History

Table 1: UDC main classes

9

cancelled in 1963 to make room for future development. All of the ten classes

are denoted by a single digit Indo Arabic number. Each ten classes or occupied

nine classes are further subdivided into ten Divisions, and each Division into

ten Sections. The main classes are shown in Table 1.

UDC classifications use Indo Arabic numerals and are based on the

decimal system. Every number is thought of as a decimal fraction with the

initial decimal point omitted, which determines filing order. For ease of

reading, a UDC identifier is usually punctuated after every third digit. Thus,

after 61 "Medical sciences" come the subdivisions 611 to 619; under 611

"Anatomy" come its subdivisions 611.1 to 611.9; under 611.1 come all of its

subdivisions before 611.2 occurs, and so on; after 619 comes 620. An

advantage of this system is that it is infinitely extensible, and when new

subdivisions are introduced, they need not disturb the existing allocation of

numbers (Wikipedia).

Universal systems of classification cannot survive unless they have

powerful sponsors. That is, the success of a classification system has less to do

with its usefulness than with the support it receives in the way of regular

supplements, expansions, available expertise (Baba, 1988). Universal decimal

classification approach is one of oldest and popular traditional approach of

Knowledge organisation but because of the lack of sponsors it could not get

the position what it should had to be. The establishment of the UDC

Management Board in 1987 was a very positive step in that direction.

However, the board must be given tools to work with, including sufficient

editorial staff and finances which would support UDC development at such a

level that the system will be marketable and acceptable to users and which will

support a high level of cost recovery. The traditional classification system used

in libraries and databases and plays an important practical role in libraries and

influences the teaching and study of Knowledge Organisation.

10

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 its regularly revised, structured, updated and

maintained by its owner (UDC Consortium). A good number of special

libraries using UDC. In India UDC is more prominent for special libraries.

Vizine-Goetz (1996) and Koch et al. (1997) maintain that classification

schemes have a long tradition of use for organizing information resources in

libraries and therefore they can also be used to effectively organize Internet

resources. A number of websites have indeed applied library classification

schemes and controlled vocabularies to manage Internet resources (Mckiernan,

2000) and their popularity indicates their potential for facilitating information

retrieval for electronic resources (Koch, 2000). UDC is widely used and

second popular scheme all over the world. It is translated in more than 30

languages and used by 30 countries for their national biographies. It is used in

thousands of library and institutions.

2.2 Features

It plays an important role in forming the effective and efficient use of

UDC on Internet. Merits and demerits all is base 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/subdiscipline.

• Standard Scheme: It is a standard scheme and is not a system

optimized to any particular collection, domain or user group, but it is

11

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 fulfills 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, 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

12

auxiliaries. Table 2 is showing common auxiliaries of UDC. Common

auxiliaries is used to express the interrelations between subjects and applicable

through out the main tables. Special auxiliaries are special and do not have

extensive applicability. The hyphen series -1/-9, the point nough series .01/. 09

and the apostrophe’s series ‘1/‘9 are three main kind of special auxiliaries.

Concept Symbol

The linking signs-Table 1a and 1b +, /, :

Language of the document-Table 1c =…

Form of the document-Table 1d (0/09)

Place - Table 1e (1/9)

Race, nationality etc.-Table 1f (=…)

Time –Table 1g “…”

Non-UDC codes etc.- Table 1h #, A/Z

General characteristics- Table 1k, includes

Properties

Materials

Process

Persons

-0…

-02…

-03…

-04…

-05…

Table 2: Common auxiliary table

• Popular: Recent research confirmed that UDC is used in libraries and

information centers in 124 countries and estimate is that it is used in from

100,000 to 300,000 libraries and institution in the world (Rigby, 1981). In 34

(mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa) it is the main classification and its

schedules can be found translated into 39 languages (Slavic, 2006; 2004).

UDC is very close in popularity to the more widely used DDC and rather more

popular than LC.

13

• Translated into many languages: The UDC has been translated into

39 languages and has been widely used all over the world. Printed editions

exist in a range of sizes from pocket editions (e.g. French, English), the

standard edition (e.g. Spanish, French, English), or expanded versions (e.g.

Russian). Electronic versions are similarly available in various languages and

formats.

UDC is more international in the sense of number of translated version

available in standard form. Its closest rival DDC (available in 30 languages)

has the span of coverage in the terms of language UDC has. UDC can provide

the necessary support in a multilingual and multiscript environment with in a

global information space (Slavic, 2003).

2.3 Merits and Demerits

UDC is the analytico synthetic classification scheme, which has

number of merits and demerits. For improvisation of any system we should be

clear about their merits and demerits and then make to step towards their

demerits. Following are the merits and demerits of UDC.

2.3.1 Merits

During the examination of different authors, came to know that a lot of

people are arguing in the favour of using UDC to classify online data.

• Hierarchical order: One feature of the UDC that makes it especially

useful for online retrieval is its expressive notation. The UDC is a hierarchical

classification, which means that it develops progressively from the general to

the specific in disciplinary and subject relationships. Even so, the overall

14

arrangement is not necessarily theoretical or logical. The UDC is built on the

premise that no one class can cover all aspects of a given subject.

Williamson points out that “Hierarchical relationships are the essence

of all classification. Enumerative classifications systems provide a systematic

arrangement of subjects according to set of principles based on an accepted

philosophy of the organization of knowledge, on patterns established on the

basis of literary warrant, and frequently, on a combination of both. However,

classified order is not self-evident. Some method or device is required to

preserve the relationships among classes, subclasses, topics and subtopics. In

some classification systems, for example UDC, these relationships are

preserved and may be manipulated through the hierarchical notation. LCC

does not fit this pattern. Its notation preserves order but does not reflect

hierarchy…some other means must be found to preserve those

relationships”(Vizine-Goetz, 1996).

The number of digits that form the UDC number indicates the

sequence of subjects from general to specific. As shown in Table 3, when the

UDC number 616.936 for the topic “Malaria” is shown in the context of its

UDC hierarchy it can be seen that “Various types of fevers” “Communicable

diseases. Infectious and contagious disease, Fevers” and “Malaria” are at the

same hierarchical level. The UDC number 616.1/9 corresponding to the

heading “Specific pathology” is one digit shorter than those used to indicate

specific kinds of disease and is considered to be broader or superordinate to

those with longer numbers. Indentation is also used to indicate hierarchy.

Through both notation and indentation, this example shows that each topic

except for the main class 6 “Medical Technology” is subordinate to and part of

all the broader classes above it.

15

6 Applied Sciences, Medicine technology

61 Medical Sciences

616 Pathology. Clinical Medicine

616.1/9 Special pathology

616.9 Communicable diseases. Infectious and contagious

disease, Fevers

616.92/93 Various types of fevers

616.936 Malaria. Marsh Fever. Paludism

Table 3: Hierarchical structure

• Flexibility: UDC is a highly flexible and effective system for

organizing bibliographic records for all kinds of information in any medium.

UDC is highly flexible to allow for constant revision in order to keep pace

with development of knowledge. Flexibility of UDC for responding to

complex interrelationship among subjects is more than DDC and LC.

• Precision: Precision is one of the most important merits of use of

UDC on Internet. When any searcher retrieves the information through the

classified websites from WWW then the precision will be high. Classified

websites has better precision than search engines such as Google, Yahoo,

Infoseek, etc.

• Browsing: UDC is a good knowledge organisation tool, which provide

a hierarchical browsing. Browsing is particularly helpful for inexperienced

users or for users not familiar with a subject and its structure. Hierarchical

structures and other features do support of the browsing. For known item,

16

search capability is optimum. For subject type queries where specific items are

not known, searching is often not effective as browsing. The Internet services

that use UDC to organise digital collections are using a browsable classified

structure and can further optimize access to their resources by exploiting

features available in the current version.

• Hospitality: Hospitality is one of the merits of the UDC to go so far

since 1904-1907. Hospitality is also known as other terms by different

researchers. Bliss called it expansive and adaptive quality of notation. Berwick

Sayers names it flexibility and defines it “a notation, which is so constructed

that, by the addition of a symbol or symbols, any new subject may be inserted

into any place in the classification without dislocating the sequence of either

the notation or the classification itself” (Sayers, 1962). To keep pace with the

knowledge and to survival of the classification scheme, must provide a ways

and means to accommodate the new subjects. The notational systems have

adequate versatility to place new classes, which the idea plane demands.

• Speed of updates and degree of support: Since 1992 the speed of

updates and degree of support became a merit of UDC, which was the weakest

and serious consideration point before it. In 1992 the UDC ownership has been

transferred from FID to UDC Consortium a non-profit organization of

publisher based in The Hague. The best classification systems are constantly

being reviewed and improved and there is still need to speed up the update of

UDC.

• Synthetic Principle: The synthetic principle is one of the main

reasons for the widespread use of UDC in preference to other systems. It

extended the use of common tables, geographical subdivisions and

viewpoints, all of which were established to different degrees in previous

classifications, and added the ‘colon principle’ whereby every part of the

17

classification became divisible by every other part. This, with the growing

complexity of knowledge, was an invaluable invention.

• Revision and maintenance: It is one of the greatest merits towards the

use of UDC on Internet. The development and maintenance of UDC was

achieved by International Federation for Information and Documentation

(FID) since its origin around 1900. But during the 1980s, it became clear that a

more broadly based, and financially autonomous, organization was needed to

administer and exploit UDC, and FID together with the publishers of the

Dutch, English, French, Japanese and Spanish editions became founder

members of a new body, the UDC Consortium (UDCC). The Consortium

assumed ownership of UDC on 1 January 1992. One of its first actions was to

create an international database, which could be the source of many kinds of

UDC edition. It is called the Master Reference File (MRF), and is held at the

Royal Library in The Hague, and updated once a year. The UDCC has also

appointed an Editor in Chief and an Advisory Board with international

membership, to oversee the content of UDC and contribute to its revision

(http://www.udcc.org/). To remain viable, it is important to get the needed

feedback from the institutions and do the revision. Revising a classification

scheme is essential to accommodate the new subjects, to delete obsolete terms

with current one and to rectify problems.

D.J. Foskett (1989) the objective of revising a classification scheme “is

to give library users an opportunity to see a spectrum of the universe of

information displayed in an order that makes sense, which enables them to

discover how the experts in each field think it best or arrange their

information”.

Revision is absolutely necessary to give the uptodateness and

contemporary look to the scheme. Since 1993 UDC has been undergoing

18

major revision and many classes were completely restructured and

modernized. Thousands of new concepts were added and many obsolete

classes were cancelled. New version of the UDC Master Reference File is

released every January and changes are published in the annual issues of the

“Extensions and Corrections to the UDC”(British Standards Institution, 2005).

Significant changes were made in the following areas (Following points under

bullets [publication year, E & C edition] after each sentence is representing the

issues of Extension and Corrections to the UDC in which that changes has

been made. Tables 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d, 1f, 1g, 1h and 1k are the ‘auxiliary’ tables

of the UDC):

• Major revision in the “place auxiliaries” Table 1e.

• Changes in “Common auxiliaries of time” Table 1g (included:

regularisation of notation, elimination of duplication, removal of concepts that

are not aspects of time) [2003, E&C 25].

• Cancelled “point of view” table 1 e and terms replaced by -02, -05 and

colon combinations [1999, E&C 21]

• Formation of Common auxiliaries of properties (-02) [1999, E&C 21]

and common auxiliaries of relation process and operation (-04) [2003, E&C

25], and persons (-05) revised and replaced main numbers for personal

characteristics throughout UDC under table 1k. [2001, E&C 23], [2002, E&C

24], [2003, E&C 25]

• Major changes are found in main class. Formation of new classes for

example: computer science and technology (004), Management (005), Social

welfare (364), Biotechnology (60).

• Major revision in Social Science (3), Mathematics and Natural Science

(5), Applied sciences. Medicine. Technology (6), The arts. Recreation.

Entertainment. Sport (7) and Geography. Biography. History (9)

19

• “Medicine” (61) is in the process of complete revision. See E&C18

(1996) and further issues

• “Religion” (2) has been completely revised. [2000, E&C 22]: Buddhism

[2001, E&C 23], Christianity - Eastern Church [2002, E&C 24], Islam [2006,

E&C 28]

Vizine-Goetz refers to Svenonius 1983 “Describes several uses for

classification in online retrieval systems, including the following, (1) to

improve precision or recall, (2) to provide context for search terms, (3) To

enable browsing, and (4) to serve as a mechanism for switching between

languages”(Vizine, 1996).

2.3.2 Demerits

Following are the demerits of UDC:

• Enumerative scheme: Enumerative schemes were sufficient in the

early days because there was not a great number of a material to be classified.

Knowledge at that time was not growing as dynamically as it is growing now

days. However, one of the major drawbacks is that there is “a rigidly specified

network of pathways leading to rigidly grouped collections of items” (Vickery,

1966). It is not possible to put the newly developed class into existing class.

Classification schemes like the UDC, DDC and the LCC are limited in

their ways of bringing out the full field of subjects in an information package.

Therefore, the need arises to investigate other ways of organizing knowledge.

The Universal decimal classification is an enumerative scheme as well

some elements of the faceted classification are also involved. “An enumerative

scheme with a superficial foundation can be suitable and even economical for

a closed system of knowledge…what distinguishes the universe of current

knowledge is that it is a dynamical continuum. It is ever growing; new

branches may stem from any of its infinity of points at any time; they are

20

unknowable at present. They can not therefore be enumerated here and now;

nor can they be anticipated, their filiations can be determined only after they

appear”(Ranganathan, 1951).

Ranganathan thus expresses the views:

1. That enumerative system has a superficial foundation.

2. That the discovery of new knowledge cannot be anticipated in an

enumerative system.

3. That the discovery of new knowledge can be anticipated in a faceted

system (based on the view that new knowledge is formed by combination of

a priory existing categories).

• Disappearance of directories: Library professionals were very

optimal for the subject classified websites to browse and search. For search

services, the way in which the two contrasting approaches to finding

information are (or are not) addressed can determine the entire character of the

service and reflects one of the major trends in search engine history. In Yahoo

and Google directory function has also been changed but both are still focused

on the main page and three clicks down respectively. At that point, other

search engine leaders including Lycos, Excite, GO Network, and HotBot gave

a prominent place on their home pages to directory categories. Alta Vista

provided a lesser placement for its directory, and Google, Northern Light, and

later all the Web featured no directory categories on their main pages.

Directory users are particularly receptive because they consult them when they

have a real need and are therefore ideally open to information. We could see

the disappearance of directories because general directories have become

largely irrelevant. The shift from the use of directories to the use of search

engines can be taken as strong evidence that search engine results have

significantly improved over the last few years (Hock, 2007).

21

• 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 favor

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 (Hjørland, 2005).

Whereas Yahoo uses its own directory structures and new categories are added

when required (Saeed and Chaudry, 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

22

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 kind 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 divison

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.

23

• Brevity: Brevity is length of the notation to express the same concept.

Notation should be as brief as possible. The notation used in the UDC effect

directly the class number allotted to the document. In most of the complex

subject case UDC has a lengthy class number. These class numbers has been

used to mechanize the system. Therefore, the lengthy notation of the subjects

can effect to the recall.

• Inconsistency: In order to solve the problems of inconsistency and

generality of classification in the database studied, but research and

development are needed. While the research should be directed mainly at

clarifying the differences in classification practices, one should add more

specific UDC classes to database consistently while taking into account

different conceptual points of view.

UDC has features, such as the auxiliaries and the signs of association,

which are not only elegant. But which could be important devices in use of

classification in online system.

2.4 Summary

In this chapter the expedition of Universal decimal classification over

100 year of their structure, maintenance and features has been addressed.

Classification schemes differ from one another in different ways, but except

UDC they all have the same objective to assign a class number to documents,

to give a specific location to the shelf documents. With this additional

objective UDC is primarily designed to index and retrieve highly technical

information and is well suited to indexing non traditional media. With passage

of time dynamic growth of information all classification schemes focused to

organize the traditional and web information. In organizing all kind of

information the features, merits and demerits of UDC are analysed and

compared to other traditional bibliographic schemes.

24

C h a p t e r 3

3. Theoretical Analysis

At the end of the nineteenth century, the Universal Decimal

Classification (UDC) was developed for the detailed specification of

information contained in parts of books and serials. It built upon the Dewey

Decimal Classification (DDC), whose first edition had been published in 1876.

Universal Decimal Classification is acknowledges as the second most used

classification in the world. DDC was designed for the arrangement of books

on library shelves and thus was not specific enough for the articles. The

designers of UDC refined the Dewey classification and developed symbols for

the representation of relationships between subjects. An example of UDC

notation is 616.24:617:616-031(.4/.5):616-036.8:614.253.8(048.83),

representing the topic " Survival after bilateral versus single lung

transplantation for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a

retrospective analysis of registry data.”

It is increasingly important for the librarians and Information specialist

to become involved in the task of classification of digital materials. Due to the

dynamic growth of information the use of documentary classification has been

declined and the emphasis is to develop and support the automatic

classification. Search engines such as Yahoo and Google are the most

common tools of accessing web resources, and the web directories like Yahoo

directory are the example of organizing WWW. Survey by the Delphi

Research Group (http://www.delphigroup.com/) shows that 70% of user’s

search time was spent browsing and that 75% of users preferred browsing to

searching (Chowdhury & Chowdhury, 2007). Current research into online

25

search tools (search engines: Google, Yahoo, Lycos etc) shows that even

highly advanced applications have problems in managing the large volume of

electronic information on the Internet. Although these search perform well in

finding exact matches to user query over the millions of web pages on the

Internet, the final query result are frequently not good enough. If we used

Boolean operators and advanced searching methods then searching tool offers

filtering and the ability of refine search result. However, in some cases where

the recall is small enough to be manageable, the relevance is very often

unsatisfactory. While in UDC based websites the searcher browse moves from

general to specific to seek the information. Universal decimal classification

can perform better in ever changing and ever expanding electronic

environment with few modifications in scheme. As we can see that 11

websites used UDC for shorter and longer period. Classifiers interpret a range

of discipline to provide structure to deal with the universal knowledge is

increasing in the same way. So for efficient retrieval it is been extremely

challenging for a classifier to understand the whole range of research and

development work in a variety of discipline.

Earlier UDC was not used in English speaking countries like, USA,

Canada, U.K and Australia. One of the reasons behind this is that DDC comes

before in existence. But UDC has been used in special libraries and

bibliographic services for which their powers in indexing and rich vocabulary

offer necessary advantages over other library classifications. UDC was used in

only a few classified catalogs in the U.S., including the Engineering Societies

Library, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, and the United Nations. Of

these, only the last mentioned still uses the scheme (Weinberg, 1996). It is

more widely used in Europe and the Middle East because the numeric notation

overcomes the language barrier. A list of libraries throughout the world that

were using the scheme three decades ago-and which may still be using it-is in

26

the UDC Consortium. There have been recent attempts to improve the

management of the classification and to speed up the revision process

(Gilchrist, 1992). Adoption of UDC by American libraries that have never

used it is unlikely, however.

UDC was the first classification system, which was given serious

consideration for the computer age, early hopes, and expectations were not

realized. Depending on a number of factors, over the next few years UDC

could decline and virtually disappear from use, or the opportunity may be

there for renewal and change, which could make it an important tool of

information system. If so, much energy will be needed to be expanded. In

UDC colon has brought its own problems, the principal one being that it fails

to distinguish between different types of relationship, but it represents the

synthetic quality of the UDC, which was unique at the time of its invention

(McIlwaine, 1997). In colon classification scheme derived by Ranganathan

used colon to denote the energy facet.

3.1 Universal decimal classification on Internet

Since 1992 UDC has been maintained in English in a database called

the UDC MRF. The UDC MRF was derived from the machine-readable files

of the first edition of BS 1000M: 1985, and was then amplified and updated

(British Standard Institution, 2005). UDC MRF updated annually and

distributed every January as ISO2709 or text files. The UDC was the first

library classification scheme to be used for information retrieval in an online

environment. It controlled and extensive vocabulary in the Sciences and

Technologies together with its synthetic, language independent notation made

it particularly agreeable to mechanization. Multilingual databanks and

bibliographic services found that the UDC was a good substitute for a

language based thesaurus, subject heading or keyword system. The very first

27

online bibliographic retrieval process to use a classification scheme for subject

searching and browsing was piloted using UDC. This was AUDACIOUS

(Automatic Direct Access to Information with online UDC system) which was

created by Atherton and Freeman in 1967-68 at the American Institute of

Physics (Atherton, 1968).

Universal Decimal Classification is an indexing system designed to

deal with knowledge recorded in documents. It is usually able to express not

just knowledge, but the form in which that knowledge is recorded, the

language in which it is presented and many features particular to the

instantiation of the particular subject within some document like object.

Bibliographic classification, UDC is the system, which have big controlled

vocabularies 65000 terms. This system give provision to describe not only

subject, but the form in which it is presented, the time and place that subject is

connected, the language it is presented in the document, the physical quality of

the carrier etc.

Several commentators see the UDC as a particularly useful starting

point for organizing web resources. It is based on the international emphasis

that is a feature of the scheme and the fact that the machine readable format of

the scheme is widely accessible to Internet developers (McIlwaine, 1995). The

UDC is the basis for the Nordic WAIS/ World Wide Web project- a

Scandinavian venture that is designed to make use of the mechanical readable

UDC and, in tandem with developing common interfaces to databases, which

can be accessed on the Web, uses the UDC vocabulary and notation to index

the databases (Ardo et al, 1994). Improving resource discovery and retrieval

on the Internet.

UDC is being constantly revised and extended to meet the dynamic

change in the special and general fields of knowledge. The revisions made by

the international revision groups for the separate discipline are published as

28

“P-Notes,” and after acceptance by FID member countries and by the

FID/CCC are issues annually in the Extension and Corrections (E & C) to the

UDC. UDC Online is searchable by truncation, and offers the option of

broadening the search if it is not immediately productive.

McLennan (2000) consider that if Internet resources were adequately

classified there seems every probability that scheme could provide adequate

access (Hunter, 2002). UDC was starts to use on Internet in an optimal way. It

is used as directory on the Internet. But now days the directories are hardly

accessed and we could see the disappearance of these directories. Even we

could see that Google search engine directory is not on the home page, it is

available on the third click. Currently search engines are not efficient

Many WWW are using the Universal decimal classification system to

classify the knowledge. Nancy J Williamson (1997) investigated the

knowledge structure of the Internet by focusing on the services that were using

classification schemes for organization. Eleven sites were using classification

system for organization. Electronic versions of the UDC make it possible to

realize the potential of library classification to improve subject retrieval;

however, much of the renewed interest in classification as an organizing and

retrieval device for information resources has been sparked by the growth in

usage of the Internet and WWW (Vizine-Goetz).

In fact, UDC can be used to index anything to exploit a field of interest

to the full, and to enable efficient retrieval of information. UDC is now being

used to arrange directories on the Internet (http://www.bsi-global.com/en/).

The subject gateways, which used UDC to organise the knowledge, are shown

in the Table 4. The Table is showing the name, acronyms and the URLs of the

website which used UDC to classify the knowledge of the web. Bulletin Board

for Libraries (BUBL) was the first quality subject gateway in the U.K. that

used UDC, and it set an example for other services to follow. During the

29

period 1990-2007, UDC was frequently mentioned in relation to the following

services: Nordic WAIS/WWW, BUBL, FVL, OMNI, IANUS, UWL, NISS,

SOSIG, GERHARD, OKO - Slovenian catalogue of the Web resources and

PORT.

Name

Acronyms URL

1. German Harvest Automated

Retrieval and Directory

GERHARD http://www.gerhard.de

2. NISS Information Gateway

NISS http://www.niss.ac.uk

3. SOSIG Social Science

Information Gateway

SOSIG http://sosig.ac.uk

4. IANUS - Informazioni

Classificate per Discipline

IANUS http://www.ianus.cineca.it/venus/ioni

o/www/awww.htm

5. WWW Subject Tree of WAIS

Databases (Nordic WAIS/World

Wide Web Project

WAIS http://www.ub2.lu.se/auto_new/UDC

.html

6. Services in classified order

Prifysgol Cymru, University of

Wales Aberystwyth

UWA http://www.aber.ac.uk/~infolib/classi

fied.html

7. Catalogue OKO (Slovenian

catalogue of the web resources)

OKO http://www.zrc-sazu.si/oko/

8. Finnish Virtual Library

FVL http://www.linkkitalo.fi/

9. Maritime Information Gateway

PORT http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/

10. Bulletin Board for Libraries

BUBL http://bubl.ac.uk/

11. Organized Access to Medical

Network Information

OMNI http://www.intute.ac.uk/healthandlife

sciences/medicine/

Table 4: Name of websites used UDC to classify information

30

Table 5 is showing the status, subject coverage, interface language and

context indexing to access the WWW. We can see that BUBL and OMNI had

switched to the other schemes in 1996 and 1998 respectively. BUBL changed

from UDC to DDC, when gateway obtained permission to use DDC from

OCLC. OMNI changed to the NLM classification in 1998, as it was more

suitable for resources in the field of medicine. OMNI started to use UDC

service in 1995, which was not the correct time for the gateway because UDC

Acronyms

Created Status Subject

Coverage

Interface Language

Content

Indexing

GERHARD 1997 Not Accessible from

2006

General English, French,

German

Automatic

NISS 1995 Not operational from

2003

General English Manual

SOSIG 1994 Operational Social

Science

English Manual

IANUS

NA Not Operational General Italian Manual

WAIS 1993 Accessible but not

updated

General English Automatic

UWA

NA Operational General English, Welsh Automatic

OKO

2000 Operational General English, Slovenian Manual

FVL 1996 Operational General English, Finnish,

Swedish

Manual

PORT 2000 Operational Maritime

Information

English Manual

BUBL 1994 Operational (no UDC

from 1996)

General

and LIS

English Manual

OMNI 1995 Operational (no UDC

from 1998)

Medicine English Manual

Table 5: Current status of UDC based websites

31

was updating its Medicine domain from 1993 to 1999. OMNI drop out it

services in 1998 because of UDC’s weakness in the Medical field. Currently, 6

subject gateways on the Internet are using UDC. By this table we know that

which website we used for the needed information. For example if somebody

wants the information about the maritime then it would be better to go through

“http://www.port.nmm.ac.uk/” rather than others. It might be possible that he/

she will get the information from the other websites, but this is effective and

efficient way to retrieve the information.

3.2 Requirement of KOS for digital services

Web is a huge repository of information, the importance and interest in

the Web has rapidly increased during the last decade. Number of different

approaches has been used to organize and utilize the Web. Pre-classifying the

Web (Web directories), indexing the Web (search engines), and assigning

metadata to the Web resources in order to integrate Web resources into library

OPACs (Online Public Access Cataloging systems) or digital libraries are

among the popular approaches (Yi, 2007). While Web search engines have

made advances in recent years, the problems of keyword searching are well

known. Significant differences in results stem from trivial variations in search

statements. These problems can be alleviated by controlled vocabularies,

which also serve as a resource for expressing an indexing concept or

information need.

Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (KOS), such as

classifications, gazetteers, lexical databases, ontologies, taxonomies and

thesauri, model the underlying semantic structure of a domain. Taxonomy is

based on the principle of classification. Gilchrist (2006) comments that

taxonomies are a sort of hybrid between classification and thesauri, although

they don’t follow the practice of either classification or thesauri. Thesauri were

32

developed in late 1950s. Thesauri were designed for use with the emerging

post coordinate indexing systems of that time, which needed simple terms with

low pre coordination, not provided by the existing indexing languages

(Aitchison, 1992). A thesaurus contains a controlled set of terms-from a

particular are of knowledge-linked by hierarchical or associative relations, it

also shows equivalence relations (synonyms) with natural language terms

(Aitchison, J et al., 2000). The aim of the thesaurus is to provide terms, which

are useful for the exact description of the subjects of a document, and at the

same time are used in the (scientific) community served. In practice this means

that thesaurus descriptors can overlap in meaning, even if synonyms and near

synonyms are controlled. In a classification scheme there is no overlapping

classes and gaps, the subclasses are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive.

However, a thesaurus is a linguistic tool and a classification is a logical tool. A

thesaurus deals with words, a classification with concept (Riesthuis and

Bliedung, 1990). A classification is strong in clarifying the meaning of term by

context through hierarchical relations. In term of classification scheme the

faceted schemes are more functioning on web. Broughton (2006) comments

that faceted classification schemes can function very well as a tool for

browsing, navigating and retrieving web information resources.

Knowledge organization system embodied as web-based services, they

can facilitate resource discovery and retrieval. They act as semantic road maps

and make possible a common orientation by indexers and future users

(whether human or machine). While Classification can be seen as the subject-

based systematic way of organizing items (Maltby, 1975) and subject has

played a predominant role in organization and classification (Chan, 1994). In

Web organization and retrieval, the discovery of primary subjects or topics of

Web resources may be an essential aspect. Also, an IFLA (International

Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) working group began to

33

investigate the new trends of Web-based subject access to Web resources.

With the increase of cataloging records for accessing digital resources in the

networked environments, subject discovery is a crucial element of cataloging

records or other metadata.

Zeng and Chan (2004) stated “Have we fully exploited technological

capabilities in our efforts to improve subject access to the myriad resources

now available in the networked environment?” Hence more attention needs to

be devoted to the development of subject discovery and access tools of Web

resources, Web pages and exploitation of UDC.

3.3 Conclusion

This chapter presents UDC analysis based on chapter 2. This chapter

analyses shows that UDC has better browsing and searching compare to search

engines and provide precise result to the user. The 11 subject gateways used to

UDC for their services to provide information in classified way and two

switched towards other services because of their own wrong decision and

demerits of UDC. Some serious consideration in improvement of UDC can

provide better opportunities for their use. In web repository the subject or topic

is an important aspect for searcher to retrieve the information. Knowledge

organizing services ontologies, taxonomy and thesauri are semantic base

organizing system while UDC is a subject and meaning based organization

system. So UDC can perform better to satisfy the need/query of users.

34

C h a p t e r 4

4. Description of applied Methods and analysis

In this chapter we will see the efficiency of UDC in comparison to

MEDLINE. MEDLINE is the U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM)'s

premier bibliographic database that contains references to journal articles in

the life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. A distinctive feature of

MEDLINE is that the records are indexed with NLM's Medical Subject

Headings (MeSH). MeSH thesaurus is the NLM’s controlled vocabulary used

for indexing and searching articles for MEDLINE/PubMed. MEDLINE is pre

coordinative indexing. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to

retrieve information that may use different terminology for the same concepts.

The database contains citations from 1950 to the present, with some older

material. New citations that have been indexed with MeSH terms, publication

types, GenBank accession numbers, and other indexing data are available daily

(Tuesday through Saturday) (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/). The 2008 edition of

MeSH contains 24,767 descriptors.

Rather than creating a MeSH Descriptor for every subject that might

be discussed in a journal article, multiple MeSH Descriptors or Qualifiers are

combined to index the desired subject. For example, jejunitis may be

expressed by the use of the Descriptors jejunum and Enteritis. Similarly,

MeSH Qualifiers cans be used in conjunction with appropriate Descriptors.

For example, a deficiency of monoamine oxidase may be indexed by the

Descriptors Monoamine Oxidase, combined with the Qualifier/Deficiency.

This combining procedure is called “coordinated” indexing. All complex

subjects are indexed by coordination. When a particular complex subject

35

occurs frequently, a pre-coordinated” Descriptors may be created. For example

for a subject of arm injuries, instead of combining the Descriptor Arm with the

Qualifier/Injuries, the single Descriptors Arm Injuries is used

(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/).

4.1 Application of Methods

The journal and title for empirical investigation is collected from the

Expanded Science Citation Index (SCI) available online through Web of

Science (Thomson-ISI) and DIALOG. The list of title of articles is chosen in

the domain of “Medicine, General and Internal” The data is collected from the

recent year 2006. To delimit the scope of the project, the highest journal

impact factor of journals has been chosen from the domain “Medicine,

General and Internal” are selected by using Journal database. Used DIALOG

to collects the title and summary of the articles from selected highest Journal

Impact Factor journals Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)

and LANCET of domain “Medicine, General and Internal”.

Class number represents the specific work. To give the class number to

the articles we have to go through the whole bibliographic information of the

article. We have to interpret the title and go through the abstract of the article

and then give the class number to any work.

4.2 Analysis

The UDC is a well-known example of a controlled information

language, used for subject indexing. ‘Controlled’ means that the language has

special features to provide for consistent description of the content of

documents. UDC is a mixed form of a enumerative and faceted classification,

in which for each complex subject there is a distinctive class with distinctive

36

notation and for faceted there is a separated classification for each

characteristics of divison.

Classification is a process that allows records to be filed correctly

using a controlled vocabulary grouping business functions or activities

together. The classification scheme is as a thesaurus, normally hierarchical in

nature, designed to accommodate all functions and activities across the

organisation which allows all users to use the same terms or wording when

applying a file title for easy retrieval at a later date. It basically provides a

standard to file titling.

To index a document, it must ensure to choose indexing terms that will

enable indexer and others to retrieve that document. It is need to add all

indexing terms that other people may search to find that document. The

indexing terms that are most commonly used are the recipient (who the

document is for) and a short description about the document and of course the

file number of the file it is being placed on. Any indexing terms those indexers

feel it need to include making the document easier to find, then add them in.

Table 6 is showing the call number of title of articles from the JAMA.

Call number is a unique code displayed in the bibliographic record that

represents the item in the catalog to identify the specific copy of the work and

give its relative location. Call number is a composition of classification

number followed by additional notation to make the call number unique. This

gives a classified arrangement to facilitate browsing. Generally, the class

number is followed by an author mark to distinguish the work from others of

the same class, followed by a work mark to distinguish the title from other

works of the same class by the same author, and some other information such

as publication date, volume number, copy number, and location symbol.

To classify the information from the WWW firstly we index and give

the class number. We are doing the comparison with MEDLINE so we chosen

37

the medicine domain. In UDC class 6 and 61 represents “Applied Sciences.

Medicine. Technology” and “Medical Sciences” respectively. 61 begin with

the preclinical elements of Medical sciences, namely Anatomy and

Physiology, followed by Health and hygiene at 613 and Public health at 614.

At this latter number the administrative and professional elements of the

subject precede public health and occupational safety and health.

Pharmacology at 615 is followed by the main tables for medicine proper at

616, where the classification of diseases is set out, accompanied by a very

detailed schedule of auxiliary subdivisions. There is considerable use of

mnemonic notation between the parts of the body, its physiology and its

diseases, with the same symbols being employed in 611, 612 and 616

whenever feasible, using parallel subdivision (McIlwaine, 2005).

UDC is a hierarchical classification with a rather high degree of pre

coordination of terms. However, post coordination of numbers by adding

common auxiliaries and specific auxiliaries to main UDC class are allowed for

complex subjects. Table 6 and 7 is showing the specific class number of the

articles. All journal article titles are of complex and multiple subjects. Only

“Menopause” is the title of article of LANCET, which is the simple subject.

The following examples show how class numbers are built using UDC

scheme. UDC shows the all applications through all the following elaborative

examples. It depends on the title of the articles that how we give their class

number in specific domain. We need to interpret all the articles according to

their bibliographic information.

For the title of “Adjuvant therapy for surgically resected pancreatic

adenocarcinoma” firstly we go through the disease “adenocarcinoma” and

then where the disease effects “pancreatic” and followed by what kind of

medication is needed “therapy”.

38

616 Pathology, Clinical Medicine (The -00…and -0…auxiliaries are

applicable throughout 616…)

616-00 morbid processes

616-006 Tumours. Neoplasms. Blastomata. Choristomata. Hamartomata.

Oncology (Special .03/. 04 auxiliaries are applicable in the subdivisions of

616-006)

Here .03/.04 represents the kind of tumours from benign to malignant tumours

in general and “/” denote a range of subjects.

616-006.04 Malignant tumours in general

616-006.04.55 Adenomata. Adenocarcinoma

615 Pharmacology. Therapeutics. Toxicology

615.2 Medicaments according to their principal action

615.24 Agents affecting the alimentary system, including oral cavity.

Gastrointestinal agents

615.245 Agents predominantly affecting the pancreas.

616 Pathology, Clinical Medicine (The - 00…and –0…auxiliaries are

applicable throughout 616…)

616-01/-09 General aspects of pathology

616-08 Treatment

616-089 Operative treatment. Operative technique. Surgery (Use - 089

subdivision only as auxiliaries with the subdivision of 616/618)

616-089.8 Operative treatment in the strict sense.

616-089.87 Ablation, Resection. Extraction. Exeresis. Organectomy

39

Here “Adenocarcinoma” 616-006.04.55 and “Adjuvant therapy for Pancreatic

Adenocarcinoma” 616-006.04.55:615.245 and finally the article “Adjuvant

therapy for surgically resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma” represent as

616-006.04.55:615.245:616-089.87

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

Adjuvant therapy for surgically resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma

616-006.04.55:615.245:616-089.87

The loss of serendipity in psychopharmacology

615.214:52-218

Nonpolypoid colorectal neoplasia in the United States-The parachute is open

616-006.8.5(73)

Financial support of Continuing Medical Education

614.253.4:37.014.54

Who really pays for health care? The myth of “shared responsibility”

640.522.2:364-232.2

A 74 year old man with memory loss and neuropathy who enjoys alcoholic

beverages

616.89-008:331.445:663:661-071-055.1-053.9

Prevelance of nonpolypoid (flat and depressed) colorectal neoplasms in

asymptomatic and symptomatic adults

616.006.8.5-036.22-053.8

Fluorouracil vs. gemcitabine chemotherapy before and after Fluorouracil-

based chemoradiation following resection of pancreatic adenocarcinoma-A

randomized controlled trial

616-006.04.55:615.245.28.811

Table 6: Class number of JAMA articles through UDC

Table 6 shows the class number of 9 different articles from Journal

American Medical Association.

40

JOURNAL: LANCET

Near-fatal bleeding, senna, and the opposite of lettuce

615.811:582.998.14.736.2

Tumour immunity: effector response to tumour and role of the

microenvironment

616-006:612.017.014.4

Menopause

618.173

Mortality in HIV-infected Ugandan adults receiving antiretroviral treatment

and survival of their HIV-uninfected children: a prospective cohort study

616.98:578.828HIV: 615:616.053.8-036.8(676.1)(083.41)

Survival after bilateral versus single lung transplantation for patients with

chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a retrospective analysis of registry data

616.24:617:616-031(.4/.5): 616-036.8:614.253.8(048.83)

Relation between fasting glucose and retinopathy for diagnosis of diabetes:

three population-based cross-sectional studies

612.122:616-071:303.733.2

Complex interventions to improve physical function and maintain independent

living in elderly people: a systematic review and meta-analysis

616-053.9(083.4)

Global HIV/AIDS estimates-looking beyond the numbers (vol 370, pg 1802,

2007)

616.98:578.828HIV:616-036.8:616-092.11(100)

A clarion call for greater investment in global sanitation (vol 370, pg 1592,

2007)

614.3:616-092.11(100)

Effective malaria control: better burden estimates needed

616.936:616-039.71

Chikungunya in Europe

616.98:578.833.1(AV)(4)

Table 7: Class number of LANCET articles through UDC

41

In the article “Mortality in HIV-infected Ugandan adults receiving

antiretroviral treatment and survival of their HIV-uninfected children: a

prospective cohort study” the “HIV infected” was the main keyword in the

study of the paper which followed by “antiretroviral treatment and survival”,

“children” and Uganda.

616 Pathology, Clinical Medicine (The -00…and -0…auxiliaries are

applicable throughout 616…)

616.9 Communicable disease. Infectious and contagious disease, fevers

616.98 Specific Infections. Infections due to particular organisms. Bacterial

and viral infections (Class here infections not provided for in 616.91/97 and

which cannot be classed with a particular part of the body, Specify by colon

combination to 578/579)

Here after finding that it is kind of infectious disease we will see which virus is

responsible for the infection. To find the virus go in the virology under Natural

Sciences.

5 Natural Sciences

57 Biological Sciences in General

578 Virology

578.8 Classification and systematics of viruses

578.82/83 Viruses primarily of vertebrate hosts

578.828 Retroviriade. Retroviruses. RNA tumour viruses

578.828HIV Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV)

HIV Infected 616.98:578.828HIV

Here add the acronym of virus HIV for Human Immunodeficiency virus.

615 Pharmacology. Therapeutics. Toxicology

42

616 Pathology, Clinical Medicine (The -00…and -0…auxiliaries are

applicable throughout 616…)

616-01/-09 General aspects of pathology

616-05 Persons and person characteristics in pathology. Characteristics of the

patient

616-053 Disease and treatment according to age

616-053.8 Disease and treatment in adults (from table 1k 053.8 stands for

adult)

Here 616-053 is used for Disease and treatment according to age and 053.8 for

adults from auxiliary table 1k.

616-03 Various forms of disease, of treatment, of administration of

medicaments

616-036 Evolution, course, prognosis of disease, treatment etc.

616-036.8 Mortality in specific disease. Survival. Statistics

Mortality in specific disease for disease and treatment in adults 616-053.8-

036.8

Uganda 676.1 (from auxiliary table 1e)

Publication/Forms-statistical tables of work 083.41(from auxiliary table 1d)

Mortality in HIV-infected Ugandan adults receiving antiretroviral treatment

and survival of their HIV-uninfected children: a prospective cohort study

616.98:578.828HIV: 615:616.053.8-036.8(676.1)(083.41)

Here (676.1) stands for ‘Uganda’ from table 1e Common auxiliaries of place

and (083.41) stands for ‘Publication /Forms-statistical tables of work’ from

table 1d Common auxiliaries of form.

43

The article ‘Chikungunya in Europe’ is mainly dealing with the disease

Chikungunya. In this article the index term are ‘Chikungunya’ and ‘Europe’.

616 Pathology, Clinical Medicine (The -00…and -0…auxiliaries are

applicable throughout 616…)

616.9 Communicable disease. Infectious and contagious disease, fevers

616.98 Specific Infections. Infections due to particular organisms. Bacterial

and viral infections (Class here infections not provided for in 616.91/97 and

which cannot be classed with a particular part of the body, Specify by colon

combination to 578/579)

5 Natural Sciences

57 Biological Sciences in General

578 Virology

578.8 Classification and systematics of viruses

578.82/83 Viruses primarily of vertebrate hosts

578.833 Togaviridae

578.833.1 Alfavirus. Group A arboviruses

616.98:578.833.1(AV) Alfavirus

Here the virus is Alfavirus and the attached acronym AV

Europe 4 (From auxiliary table 1e)

Chikungunya in Europe 616.98:578.833.1(AV)(4)

Here 4 stand for ‘Europe’ from table 1e Common auxiliaries of place.

Now classified articles of Table 6 (JAMA) and Table7 (LANCET) are

showing that UDC can easily classify and index the recent articles of year

44

2007 while ‘Medicine’ in UDC has been well updated in 1999. The important

concepts from the above study ‘Adenocarcinoma’ and ‘Chikungunya’ were

missing in the UDC index 2005 edition. We found that MEDLINE and UDC

both are the special and general bibliographic classification respectively. Both

have the nearly same kind of structure tree and hierarchical. The difference is

in the types of terms in controlled vocabulary. Vocabulary control tool MeSH

is a controlled language tool used to facilitate access to information by using

pre coordinated natural language terms. UDC includes the two types of terms

of headings Descriptors (from main tables) and Qualifiers (represents from

auxiliary tables). MeSH vocabulary includes the four types of terms Headings

(over 24,000 headings represents concepts found in the biomedical),

Subheadings (also called qualifiers: attached to MeSH headings to describe a

specific aspect of concepts), Supplementary concepts records (over 172,000

terms in a separate chemical thesaurus which updated weekly) and Publication

Characteristics (also known as Publication types, describe the type of

publication being indexed). MEDLINE has more than 50% descriptors of

UDC. We can see that MEDLINE is weekly updated database and UDC

yearly. MEDLINE is dealing only with one domain of the UDC.

But still JAMA and LANCET articles has been classified well through

UDC. The UDC achieved the better recall with the help of hierarchical

structure. The above examples are showing that we can classify and organize

the articles and information on web in a good manner. The uses of

classification and indexing can yield more satisfying design and evaluation

criteria for information retrieval systems than the ideas of measuring relevant

and recall abilities characteristically assumed in retrieval research.

45

4.3 Conclusion

This chapter described the method used for the study of analysing the

efficiency of UDC to organize the information on Internet. MEDLINE the

special bibliographic classification and UDC the general bibliographic

classification is compared. It is concluded that UDC can classify the

information of Medicine on Internet in a good approach. It is investigate that

UDC is a system, which performs incredibly because of their merits, can

statute just by prevail of their demerits.

46

C h a p t e r 5

5. Conclusion and Future Work

The Web is a confused repository of varied information, which lacks

the coordination and organization of a traditional library concept. It has been

practiced and proved that the use of traditional library tools and techniques

could be a great help in enlightening the Internet. Still to choose the needed,

exhaustive & pinpointed information remains a problem. After analysis we

found out there are lot of merits and demerits of the use of UDC on the

Internet. Other Universal scheme like DDC and LC also could have almost the

same advantages and disadvantages. Still UDC always remains less complex

and popular because of certain additional factors that determine weather or not

a given library classification scheme will be adopted.

UDC is used worldwide, so for its improvement it has to be kept in

mind that responsibilities towards its diverse users and demerit uneven

maintenance need to be solve for this front and need to update equally each

classes and domains. For the international representation of the Universal

Decimal classification all revisions committee asked to analyse their part of

the UDC and to indicate what changes UDC needed in respect to go parallel

with the dynamic information. With this analysis, preparations are made to

make more indicator and auxiliary numbers or facets will be introduced.

In this thesis we analysed and found out that some features like

decimal notation and synthetic principle is a landmark in the development of

notation. It is one of the obvious reasons for the worldwide use and popularity.

Use of UDC on Internet has some merits as well as demerits. So to come out

the problem of demerits like disappearance of directories have to make the

47

system user friendly. If one demerit will be sort out then the other will already

be solved up to some extent. Many systematic changes now are being made in

the UDC database, which will help to solve the barrier, which comes to

organize the knowledge of web. One of the important factors revision and

keep uptodateness. Moreover revise and update publication of different

editions at regular interval could make a drastic change to use of UDC on

Internet.

Revision is one of the challenges for the UDC to keep pace with

developing knowledge. Only revision can make the drastic change in the

whole scheme and the usability of scheme. The whole position is stated

clearly in the General Introduction to British Standard 1000A: 1957 from

which the following paragraph is a quoted “the governing rule in all UDC

revision work is that the significance of a particular number may be extended

or restricted, but may not be completely altered. If a UDC number (with any

subdivisions) is obsolete, it may be “cancelled”, which means that its use is no

longer authorized because a better or more up-to-date arrangement has been

developed under another number, often a “free” (unused) number. Eventually,

the cancelled number becomes “free” (by disuse) and may then be authorized

with a completely different significance, but only after a period of 10 years,

which is considered the minimum necessary to enable current users to readjust

their files and to avoid widespread confusion of the older and newer meanings.

This policy undoubtedly slows down revision, but probably creates least

dissatisfaction, especially when applied with discretion and some degree of

flexibility.

UDC is not yet a perfect system that can be all things to all people, but

it keeps pace with the new knowledge and its continuously evolving towards

universality if it speed up their responsibility towards revision and

uptodateness .At present it is trying to equip, to meet the challenges of new

48

millennium to organise and retrieves the pinpointed data/ information from

chaotic store of knowledge (Internet). Many systematic changes are now being

made in the UDC database to meet the challenge of organisation.

Currently search engines are not efficient enough to provide adequate

bibliographic control over an electronic extended resource, and there is a scope

for librarians, classifier and libraries to augment their collection policies with

an understanding of the problem of the digital materials (Lesk, 1997). We can

say that analytico synthetic schemes have their own disadvantages in the

Networked environment. It is suggested that if we transform UDC in a more

faceted scheme, and base it more than now on the post coordination principle

then it may be more suitable to attain the goal to UDC for web environment. In

this case the vocabulary of UDC will be more analytical and the wording of

UDC numbers will be considerably shorter and we shall avoid occurring of the

same concepts in many places. The consistent application of the principles of

faceted classification will also improve the hierarchical arrangement of UDC

numbers (Scibor, 1978).

In comparison to the MEDLINE, UDC has the same efficiency to

classify the articles. During comparison, it is analysed that if UDC over comes

the problem of uneven maintenance and it could perform as an efficient in all

class and domain of knowledge as in Medicine.

Lastly, from the analysis we could say that the compared to other

bibliographic tools, UDC seems to have a better potential for Internet resource

discovery. To improve resource discovery it is very necessary to see from the

end users perspective and the user feedback. UDC prospects are good for

developing effective UDC based browsing structures to large baffling web

collection only after their uptodateness. The slowness of revision is directly

connected with the degree of internationalization of the system and with the

increasing popularity by its users. Finally we could say that the most important

49

problem for UDC on Internet is to update the UDC with real need for

improvements in its structure (main and auxiliary tables) and notation

(relator/facets). However, UDC cannot be recommended to new users who

want to classify their uptodate knowledge in Philosophy, Religion and Social

Sciences until and unless it is updated well in these domains. The long term

the survival or success of the UDC will be highly dependent on its ability to

respond realistically to the combined challenges of economy, standardization

and technology (Williamson, 1990).

50

Abbreviations

AENOR Asociacion Espanola de Normalizaciony Certificacion (Spanish

standards body)

ASLIB Association of Special Libraries & Information Bureau

BSI British Standards Institute

BSIB British Society for International Bibliography

CC Colon Classification (CC7 seventh edition)

CCC Central Classification Committee

CRG Classification Research Group

DDC Dewey decimal classification

FID International Federation for Documentation

IFLA International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions

LC Library of Congress Classification

MEDLINE Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online

MEDLARS MEDical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System

MeSH Medical Subject Headings

51

MRF Master Reference File

NLM National Library of Medicine

OPAC Online Public Access Catalogue

PMEST Personality; Matter, Energy, Space, Time [fundamental

categories postulated by S.R Ranganathan for subject analysis]

SCI Science Citation Index

UDC Universal Decimal Classification

UDCC Universal Decimal Classification Consortium

52

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