Dewey decimal classification

Dewey decimal classification.

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), or Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. It has been revised and expanded through 23 major editions, the latest issued in 2011, and has grown from a four-page pamphlet in 1876 with fewer than 1,000 classes to a four volume set. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. It is currently maintained by the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.The major competing classification system to the Dewey Decimal system is the Library of Congress Classification system created by the U.S. Library of Congress.

Dewy decimal classification

Notation

A notation is a code commonly used in classification schemes to represent a class, i.e. a subject and its position in the hierarchy, to enable mechanical sorting and filing of subjects. UDC uses Arabic numerals arranged decimally. Every number is thought of as a decimal fraction with the initial decimal point omitted, which determines the filing order. An advantage of decimal notational systems is that they are infinitely extensible, and when new subdivisions are introduced, they need not disturb the existing allocation of numbers. For ease of reading, a UDC notation is usually punctuated after every third digit:

I.      Flexibility:

 It is a flexible and effective system fororganizing bibliographic records for all kinds of information in any medium.UDC is highly flexible to allow for constant revision in order to keep pacewith development of knowledge. Flexibility of UDC for responding to

complex interrelationship among subjects is more than DDC and LC.

ii            Hierarchy

The number of digits that form the UDC number indicates the

sequence of subjects from general to specific.

Precision:

 Precision is one of the most important merits of use of

UDC on Internet. When any searcher retrieves the information through the

classified websites from WWW then the precision will be high. Classified

websites has better precision than search engines such as Google, Yahoo,

Infoseek, etc

Synthetic Principle:

The synthetic principle is one of the main

reasons for the widespread use of UDC in preference to other systems. It

extended the use of common tables, geographical subdivisions and

viewpoints, all of which were established to different degrees in previous

classifications, and added the ‘colon principle’ whereby every part of the

classification became divisible by every other part. This, with the growing

complexity of knowledge, was an invaluable invention

Relativ Index

The "Relativ Index" is an alphabetical index to the classification, for use both by classifiers but also by library users when seeking books by topic. The index was "relative" because the index entries pointed to the class numbers, not to the page numbers of the printed classification schedule. In this way, the Dewey Decimal Classification itself had the same relative positioning as the library shelf and could be used either as an entry point to the classification, by catalogers, or as an index to the Dewey-classed library itself.

Relative location

The Decimal Classification introduced the concepts of relative location and relative index which allow new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Libraries previously had given books permanent shelf locations that were related to the order of acquisition rather than topic.

Summary

000 Computer science, information & general works

100 Philosophy & psychology

200 Religion

300 Social sciences

400 Language

500 Science

600 Technology

700 Arts & recreation

800 Literature

900 History & geography