Can someone shed light on where the fact that JISC chose Dewey as the Information Environment backbone comes from?

I think in some areas Dewey has been used as a pragmatic choice but it is not the endorsed JISC IE backbone as far as I aware. 

Dewey has been used in a fair few JISC developments and services but I don't see this as the JISC IE backbone. However I am willing to be corrected. 

JISC would like a solution that helped interrogate all different types of information and resources and to bring them together in different ways but across the 'JISC IE' different classification schemes and teminologies are implemented. I would say the jury is out. 

Of course I may have come to conversation out of context but I don't want people thinking the JISC insists on Dewey for everything when we don't. 

As far as I can see the Information Environment registry has a policy that is not exclusive to Dewey; the guidelines say you can use one or more of the following:

Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC or Dewey) 
Humanities and Social Science Electronic Thesaurus (HASSET) 
Joint Academic Coding Scheme (JACS) 
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) 
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) 
Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) 
UNESCO Thesaurus  

Thanks, Rachel




Rachel Bruce
Programme Director, Information Environment
JISC Executive
1st Floor
Brettenham House South
5 Lancaster Place
London
WC2E 7EN
Tel: 02030066061
Mobile:07841 951300
Fax: 02072405377
Web: http://www.jisc.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Smith
Sent: 11 March 2008 16:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: JISC preferred classification scheme

Ann,

Most US and large UK university libraries use LCC. It simply scales better. When you have collections of a million plus items Dewey can become cumbersome.

Some parts of the BL may use Dewey but judging by the shelfmarks displayed when you search their catalogue they don't use it for organising items on the shelves.

John.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ann Apps
> Sent: 11 March 2008 15:37
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: JISC preferred classification scheme
> 
> John, and All,
> 
> I guess that one reason why EPrints is not shipped with Dewey is
> that one needs a licence to use Dewey.
> 
> I don't know why JISC chose Dewey as the Information Environment
> backbone.
> 
> However The British Library uses Dewey. [And I thought all
> libraries use Dewey for arranging books on shelves, but that may
> be a naïve non-librarian's impression.]
> 
> 	Ann
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> Ann Apps MBCS CITP. Research & Development, Mimas,
>    The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL,
> UK
> Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6039  Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 6040
> Email: [log in to unmask] WWW:
> http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Smith
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2:57 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: [JISC-REPOSITORIES] JISC preferred classification
> scheme
> >
> > Ann,
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> > > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ann Apps
> > > Sent: 11 March 2008 13:30
> > > To: [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> > >
> >
> > > Actually a decision was made quite some time ago that the
> backbone
> > > subject classification scheme for the JISC Information
> Environment
> > > is Dewey. (Don't shoot me down, I'm only reporting this!)
> Because
> > > of that, another application I work on (different from and
> > > unrelated to the one harvesting from repositories) uses Dewey
> as
> > > its backbone subject classification scheme.
> >
> > Interesting. I wonder why EPrints is shipped with a basic LC
> classification tree
> > instead?
> >
> > Also - why Dewey anyway, since almost all large Uni libraries
> use LCC?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > John Smith.
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