FID & UDC Archive news

On 2 October work started on the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) and UDC archive. The archive is located in the basement of the  National Library of Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek).

About the archive

First FID archive folders

Following the creation of the UDC Consortium in 1992, and the dissolution of the FID in 2000, records from the organization were packed into around 150 large cardboard boxes waiting for a permanent place.

The collection consists of:

• around 250 archive folders from the FID with the organization's documentation and publications since its foundation in 1895 (then known as the International Institute of Bliography) 
• the archive of the UDC
• the records of the FID Central Classification Committee
• UDC revision records since 1920s (around 60 metres of shelf space) 
• UDC editions in world languages since 1905 (around 30 metres of shelf space)

Once the entire collection is categorised we will start with a more detailed analysis of the material, its classification and processing. Cataloguing, classification and digitizing the collection will start in 2013, once we have a full overview of the size and content of the archive. There is no doubt that the part of the archive dealing with FID and its international work on documentation and bibliography will be valuable to many researchers in this field. A carefully maintained record of the UDC development, the early correspondence and discussion of the FID/CCC will certainly be a valuable source for researchers in the field of classification history. 

UDC as linked data

The Multilingual UDC Summary has been available as SKOS (XML/RDF) since November 2011. UDC Summary has over 2,500 UDC subdivisions including common auxiliaries (language, place, form, materials, properties etc.). UDC records in this selection contain notes, examples, references and are available in 48 languages. 

In addition to the static export download, the UDC SKOS export is also available for browsing via an html interface which displays each UDC class as a single page with an option for language selection. Both the linked data browsing interface and a single download are available from the UDC linked data webpage. The mapping between UDC and SKOS classes is also available from the same page.

The complete UDC are planned to be made available for machine-to-machine access on the web following the 2012 UDC update. This is planned to include not only 70,000 valid UDC numbers but also 11,000 cancelled classes - which will enable linking and redirecting of library catalogues containing deprecated notations. 

The UDC Summary is now being updated and expanded with UDC MRF 2011 data to include more records in the place auxiliaries and biology areas.

Development of the Multilingual UDC Online

The first complete UDC online schedules were published by BSI in 2000 for UDC in English (see UDC Online). In the subsequent years a number of other complete schedules appeared online in other languages: Czech, Slovenian and Slovakian and several free applications such as the Swedish and old Italian schedules that are not official UDC publications but are released to alleviate problems due to a lack of UDC schedules in these languages. To help with the teaching and training of UDC in 2009, the UDC Consortium released a free Multilingual UDC Summary, which now contains more than 2,500 subdivisions and is available in almost 50 languages and is published as linked data.

What we are able to do now?
In 2010 UDCC created a much needed database infrastructure to support an alignment and translation management tool for various language editions of the complete UDC. The UDC Consortium currently holds in its main UDC MRF mutlilingual database English, Spanish, Czech, Croatian, German and  Dutch UDC MRF data, and plans are being made for other languages to be imported. The translation of these languages has been progressing for over a year now.
 

The translation database service provided by the UDC Consortium means that UDC editions in preparation are being automatically aligned with every new update of the UDC and publishers have a much needed tool to manage translations online and plan the production of their editions.

The natural extension of such a service is a classification interface for end-users that would enable a straigtforward, quick and cost-efficient way of publishing online the full UDC schedules for all publishers. The UDC Consortium is currently working on developing a Multilingual UDC Online user interface to be released in 2013. The most obvious advantage for publishers is that they would avoid the costs of developing their own online products. In addition this service will  be supported by the translation tool comprising of automatic UDC alignments and translators' support which means that the editions can be made accessible to users simultaneously with the ongoing translation of newely revised areas.

Apart from functionality of UDC table browsing, searching and number-building functions already available in products such as BSI's UDC Online, the Multilingual UDC Online is envisaged to have the following features:
- provide access to cancelled UDC number records and their redirections to valid numbers
- allow adding of comments, local data and proposing search terms, mappings etc.
- have a tool to parse, validate or sort complex UDC strings that librarians would like to check
- allow launching of a UDC search against selected library catalogues or bibliographies
- have dedicated editors provide user support for particular languages