Hi Neil,
The UDC website that Aida mentioned in her invitation gives a good
introduction to the system at http://www.udcc.org/about.htm. "Universal
Decimal Classification (UDC) is the world's foremost multilingual
classification scheme for all fields of knowledge, a sophisticated indexing
and retrieval tool".
Number based indexing schemes have the advantage of being language
independent, which does facilitate international co-operation, but at some
point the concept behind a general classification such as '56:
Palaeontology' needs to be defined - and at that point you're back to
language, with all the translation problems etc.
Decimal systems are also (as far as I'm aware - and I hasten to add I'm no
expert!) organised with a single hierarchy, rather than the greater
flexibility of a polyhierarchical thesaurus structure.
Ed
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Neil Campling [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 13 May 2003 08:27
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [FISH] Course invitation: UDC
>
>
> Dear Ms Slavic,
>
> Please tell me what the UDC is, or what it is supposed to do.
>
> Cheers,
> N Campling
>
>
>
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