Sunday 22 September 2013

UDC Online - a new service for users of the scheme

UDC Consortium has released a new service providing online access to the complete content of the UDC Master Reference File.

UDC Online is designed as a hub for UDC schedules in different languages. The service is a collaboration between the Consortium and UDC publishers in several countries.

English was the first language to be released on 26th August. Users can subscribe to the service and also partake of a two-week free trial here. The new UDC Consortium UDC Online replaces the previous online tool by BSI which will close on 1st October.

More languages will be added as they become available starting with Dutch, French, Czech, German and Croatian.

UDC Online is the complete standard up-to-date version of the Universal Decimal Classification scheme. It offers advanced searching and browsing and supports the management of UDC numbers. UDC Online is always aligned to the latest official version of the UDC Master Reference File. Language data appears in the service as it is available, while the translation and editing process is running in the background. One of the features of the tool is that it also contains cancelled classes and their redirections to valid UDC numbers. This segment of the service is going to be developed and gradually improved to encompass most of the relevant historical UDC data. This has an important advantage for libraries using obsolete UDC notations.

UDC Online is available as an annual subscription and is maintained and managed entirely by the UDC Consortium, the owner of the UDC.