IFLA Newsletter on Indexing and Classification

The June newsletter for the Classification and Indexing section is now available.

Table of Content:

• IFLA 2007 Durban
• UDC News
• DDC News
• International Developments in Classification and Indexing
• TEL-ME-MOR/M-CAST
• ISKO UK

Helmut Arntz (1912-2007)

Professor Helmut Emil Richard Arntz (1912-2007) died on 31 May 2007. Professor Arntz held the posts of vice-president (1965-1971) and president of the FID (1972-1980). He was a founding member of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Dokumentation of which he was the president 1962-1972.

Professor Arntz worked on the Universal Decimal Classification since 1952. He was the chair of the FID/Central Classification Committee from 1959-1986 and was involved in the revision of social sciences. He was also the member of several UNESCO Committees. Professor Arntz was the author of many publications and a recipient of many international awards for his contribution to the field of documentation.

(More detailed biography and bibliography of Prof. Arntz is available here ).

Press release - UDC Seminar, The Hague

A two day International Seminar on the UDC, organized by UDC Consortium, was held at the UDC Headquarters in the The Hague 4-5 June 2007. The event was entitled "Information Access for the Global community" and its aim was to explore the latest developments and applications of the Universal Decimal Classification. The Seminar brought together UDC publishers, editors of the scheme and UDC users and offered an opportunity for information exchange and discussion of future developments.

There were around seventy participants from over thirty countries including librarians, subject specialists, editors of national editions of the scheme, university lecturers, researchers and LIS students. The conference programme included eleven invited talks on the topics of user experiences and applications, innovative approaches in UDC use and UDC education and training (see programme). Papers will be published in the forthcoming Extensions and Corrections to the UDC, in November 2007 and will be also made available online from the UDC website.

The UDC Consortium chairman Alan Hopkinson and the UDC Editor in Chief Maria Inês Cordeiro invited greater input from users and announced a newly formed international editorial team and new editorial system that will support the collaborative input of an international team of UDC revision experts. The UDC MRF file will be moved to a new database with extended functionality, including improved and more diversified UDC exports in 2007. The UDC Consortium announced that this successful seminar would be the first in the series of similar events it plans to organize in the future.