The application of the Universal Decimal Classification for the mechanization in documentation and library work

Abstract

For years the attitude has prevailed as if the Universal Decimal Classifilcation (UDC) would not be suitable for mechanized processing in documentation centres and libraries. All the same, the literature contains references of many cases in which the use of the UDC is coupled with mechanized data processing. A brief review of the results achieved is given in order to correct misconceptions conceming the applicability of the UDC for mechanization.
1. In 1941 punched card techniques have been introduced in the Montclair (New Jersey) Public Library. Most probably this was the first time, that the DC has been applied to a mechanized process.
2. The UDC played a much more significant role in both of the two punched card based information retrieval systems which have been presented at the Royal Society Conference on Scientific Information held 1948 in London.
3. In the following years various working processes in documentation centres and libraries were gradually mechanized.
4. The most frequently mechanized encountered cases of the use of the UDC in mechanization is clearly the preparation of biblio-graphical lists, bound catalogues etc. Such activities are pursued in Hungary too. The Hungarian Central Technical Library and Documentation Centre produces cumulated bound catalogues classified according to the UDC since 3 years by means of punched card techniques.
5. In the course of the mechanical processing of UDC notations the special symbols presented many difficultles. R. R. Freeman substituted the symbols with charactsrs and thus solved the problem: the UDC notations consisting only out of numbers and characters can easily be ordered and processed by machines.
6. For a considerable time the use of the UDC was limited to traditional documentation and library processes. The idea to utilize this classification system also for machine indexing emerged only later. The first machine-made index based on the UDC, the so called Unidek-index, was completed by M. Rigby in 1962.
7. The Unidek II index was further developed by M. Russel and R. R. Freeman. This consists of 2 parts. The Unidek-index arranged according to UDC supplemented by a KWIC-lndex of the relevant words followed by the corresponding UDC-numbers taken from the first part of the index.
8. K. Schneider and K. H. Koch prepared an index with an entirely different structure. They produced by computer a KWIC-index from UDC notations.
9. P. Atherton and R. R. Freeman published in a paper a full solution for the applicatlon of the UDC in mechanized information retrieval.
10. Systematic research work is in progress for evaluating to what extent the UDC can be used as indexing language for a mechanized information retrieval system and how its efficiency might be improved. An outline is given of the objectives to be attained by the research.
As a conclusion it is stated that while the application of the UDC is at present mostly limited to the traditional working processes in documentation and library work, new ideas are constantly arising, the originality and ingeniousness of which proves that the UDC still offers many possibilities not yet explored until now.