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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
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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