The International UDC Seminar 2009 entitled "Classification at a Crossroads: multiple directions to usability" took place in The Hague on 29-30 October 2009.
The conference was very successful in bringing together speakers and audience from different communities interested in, and working with, classification schemes. There were 135 delegates in attendance from 32 countries and from various kinds of information services and institutions, libraries, museums, academia and research institutes. The focus of the conference was on technical and technological issues on how to make classification work in a networked environment.
Talks provoked interesting discussions and left us all with the feeling that we need more events of this kind which would give opportunities to technical, software and standards specialists to interact with classificationists, classification owners and practitioners. The panel discussion at the end of the conference stressed again how the application environment for classification has changed significantly for both those who publish and distribute classification and for those who apply it. The commitment to open sharing and linking of data is a shared responsibility.
It transpires that many issues that deal with classification use are not entirely to do with funding or programming expertise as much as a matter of 'know how' and there is a great responsibility on gatekeepers of this knowledge and expertise to share it and make it accessible.
We have now published talk slides and mp3 recordings. The proceedigns of the conference will be published in the Extensions & Corrections ot the UDC, issue 31 (2009) and the selections of papers will be published in the Knowledge Organization journal.
It transpires that many issues that deal with classification use are not entirely to do with funding or programming expertise as much as a matter of 'know how' and there is a great responsibility on gatekeepers of this knowledge and expertise to share it and make it accessible.
We have now published talk slides and mp3 recordings. The proceedigns of the conference will be published in the Extensions & Corrections ot the UDC, issue 31 (2009) and the selections of papers will be published in the Knowledge Organization journal.
