025.431: The Dewey blog

Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA Annual 2012

Eighty-seven librarians joined us for the Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA.  Libbie Crawford kicked things off with an update on Dewey products plus a discussion on how we plan to produce an “abridged view” within WebDewey.  Abridged edition users in the audience gave us a thumbs up on the approach—they particularly liked the proposals to show segmentation in Dewey numbers associated with Relative Index entries and to make links to static PDFs from the print version of Abridged Edition 15 available.  Michael Panzer continued the WebDewey theme in his first presentation by giving an update on the user contribution / number building assistance feature currently under development and set to be installed in WebDewey within the next three months. 

Diane Vizine-Goetz (OCLC Research) gave an update on two of her research projects: Classify (now a service that can be launched from the Connexion command menu) and Kindred Works (the demo version will be out later this month). 

Juli Beall presented our latest proposals for the treatment of Islamic law in 340 Law.  EPC recently approved distribution of a discussion paper on the proposed extensions—watch this space for an announcement when the paper is posted for comment. 

I discussed the history, implementation, and next steps associated with the virtual chronological/regional browser of the Bible and specific religions (the browser is now available on the Dewey web site here, and includes links to Dewey-classified resources in WorldCat.org).  We’ve been talking about this alternate view of religion for a long time (see a 2006 post here, and a more recent one here).  We encourage users to try out the browser and give us feedback.

Michael closed the program with a quick talk on DDC 23 as linked data, including the relationship between Dewey linked data and the schema.org descriptive mark-up version of WorldCat as linked data (see Roy Tennant’s excellent overview on OCLC’s linked data announcements last week, plus Michael’s and my recent blog posts on Dewey linked data).  Once again, we are very interested in use cases for Dewey linked data—let us know about your experiments and ideas!

DDC 23 released as linked data at dewey.info

As announced on Monday at the seminar "Global Interoperability and Linked Data in Libraries" in beautiful Florence, an exciting new set of linked data has been added to dewey.info. All assignable classes from DDC 23, the current full edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification, have been released as Dewey linked data. As was the case for the Abridged Edition 14 data, we define "assignable" as including every schedule number that is not a span or a centered entry, bracketed or optional, with the hierarchical relationships adjusted accordingly. In short, these are numbers that you find attached to many WorldCat records as standard Dewey numbers (in 082 fields), as additional Dewey numbers (in 083 fields), or as number components (in 085 fields).

The classes are exposed with full number and caption information and semantic relationships expressed in SKOS, which makes the information easily accessible and parsable by a wide variety of semantic web applications.

This recent addition massively expands the data set by over 38.000 Dewey classes (or, for the linked data geeks out there, by over 1 million triples), increasing the number of classes available almost tenfold. If you like, take some time to explore the hierarchies; you might be surprised to find numbers for Maya calendar or transits of Venus (loyal blog readers will recognize these numbers).

All the old goodies are still there, of course. Depending on which type of user agent is accessing the data (e.g., a browser) a different representation is negotiated (HTML or various flavors of RDF). The HTML pages still include RDFa markup, which can be distilled into RDF by browser plug-ins and other applications without the user ever having to deal with the RDF data directly.

We have incorporated some of the "lessons learned" as gentle improvements of the Dewey URIs and the underlying RDF data model. We now implement a more complete version of the Dewey class URIs and have also switched to a new date format that should be easier to parse by user agents. Compare a sample "old" URI for a specific concept like http://dewey.info/class/539.7/2009/07/about.en with a URI that accesses a single DDC 23 class: http://dewey.info/class/539.7/e23/2012-06-14/about.en. But don't worry, URIs with the deprecated date format will still work and are automatically redirected to their new counterparts. If your starting point for constructing URIs was cataloging data (i.e., MARC 082 fields), your links to dewey.info in all likelihood have been more general anyway (and will not be affected by these changes).

I will not go into details about improvements to the data model; this is a topic for another day (along with some SPARQL query wizardry). But if you feel like diving right in, the SPARQL endpoint is of course still available for advanced queries and use as a web service.

Finally, two major features of the Dewey data deserve special mention: licensing and handling of updates. In terms of licensing, all data (including DDC 23 classes) are still reusable under the same terms (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND) and the license is carried in each record. Regarding updates, dewey.info is now fully integrated into the standard data flow of the Dewey ecosystem; updates are automatically distributed from the same source that provides data for WebDewey. Going forward, DDC 23 data in dewey.info will be updated regularly.

I hope you find this news as exciting as we do! Let us know what you think and how you plan to use Dewey linked data in your own applications or data sets. DDC 23 as linked data provides a living and breathing foundation for further ventures into the linked data space in the near future. Stay tuned!

EPC Meeting 135

Joan is off in Florence (yes, Florence, Italy, not Florence, Nebraska) speaking at the Global Interoperability and Linked Data in Libraries Seminar, so I’m stepping in to report on last week’s meeting of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC)—Meeting 135—held in Dublin (yes, Dublin, Ohio, not Dublin, Ireland—hmm, that just doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?).   Stay tuned for a report from Joan on the Florence meeting later this week.

This EPC meeting had a strong people component to it—and we’re not talking Table 1—08 Groups of people here.  

• EPC welcomed two new committee members:   Pat Riva, Coordinator of the Monographs Section in the Cataloguing Directorate for Heritage Collections (Direction du traitement documentaire des collections patrimoniales) at Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) in Montreal, Canada, and Gert de Jager,  Subject Cataloguer, Unisa Library, University of South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa.  Incidentally, Pat is also speaking at the Florence seminar.
• EPC celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee by re-electing Caroline Kent (British Library) as chair and electing Jonathan Furner (UCLA, but, as you may recall, formerly an assistant editor of the DDC) as vice-chair (you can take the Englishman out of the British Isles, but fortunately the accent lingers on).  Jonathan replaces Anne Robertson (Australian Committee on Cataloguing), who had served the maximum number of years as vice-chair.
• EPC passed a resolution congratulating and offering best wishes to Jay Jordan, outgoing president and CEO of OCLC.  As the resolution noted, Jay has “unfailingly [advocated] and [supported] the mission of the Dewey Decimal Classification;” we trust he will remain “a Friend of Dewey.”
• Where’s the picture of all these people? you ask.   Remember our trusty photographer Giles Martin, who retired from his position as assistant editor of the DDC last year and returned home to Australia?   The lack of an official photograph of the EPC meeting is only one of the more visible losses (pun intended) we have suffered with Giles’ relocation to Australia.   (But note that we have not discontinued him!  Giles is still contributing to DDC maintenance and development.)

The agenda included proposals related to modifications to EPC work methods and DDC development (for example, how can data from WorldCat be used to inform development of the DDC?), new editorial rules for segmentation and for oceans and seas, and updates to the classification.   More particularly, a new standard subdivision for archaeology is coming; small updates to the classification in Table 2 Geographic Areas were approved, as were updates in 004-006 Computer science and 330 Economics.  The committee considered discussion papers on Islamic law; the treatment of marriage, partnerships, and unions in the DDC; and the possible adoption of a new taxonomic basis for 583-584 Angiosperms. The committee approved follow-up discussion and consultation on all but the last.

The committee had a wide-ranging discussion on engaging with Dewey users and the role of social media. The agenda also included presentations on modeling topics in the DDC, DDC research, DDC training, edition-level metadata, Dewey linked data, data provenance, upcoming enhancements to WebDewey 2.0, and the virtual chronological/regional religion browser.

Two follow-up electronic meetings have been scheduled:  Meeting 135A will take place the first week in October and will focus on Islamic law, while Meeting 135B has been scheduled for the first week in November to consider a revised proposal on marriage, partnerships, and unions.   The next face-to-face meeting of EPC—Meeting 136—will be held at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio, 13–14 May 2013.

European DDC Users' Group (EDUG)

A brief bit of news on the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG):  The group met in Egypt at Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) 26-27 April 2010.  The first day was devoted to meetings of three working groups (370, 930, and IT), plus the EDUG business meeting.  (The EDUG 340 Law Working Group was not able to meet in Alexandria, but has planned a meeting in conjunction with IFLA.)  On 27 April, EDUG and BA co-sponsored a full-day seminar, “Bridging the Class(ification) Divide: The New DDC Languages and Retrieval Possibilities.”  The seminar featured speakers from the Arab region, Europe, and the United States.  Presentations from the seminar are now available here. 

CrissCross and Concepts in Context

The CrissCross research project was first mentioned in this blog in a report on the 2006 meeting of translators and representatives of national libraries and bibliographies using the DDC; the meeting had the theme “Dewey Numbers in Authority Files.”  The project has been funded by the German Research Foundation and conducted by the German National Library and the Cologne University of Applied Sciences. Michael Panzer, now DDC assistant editor, was once team leader of CrissCross.

Here from the CrissCross site is a brief description:

In CrissCross the subject headings of the German subject headings authority file (SWD) are mapped to notations of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The method chosen for the mapping procedure is a directional one: the German subject headings function as initial vocabulary, the DDC as target classification. Appropriate DDC numbers are added directly to the particular SWD data record. The SWD Subject Groups serve as a starting point for the creation of work packages.

The mapping is carried out as specific as possible (Deep level mapping); if necessary, institutional notations are built according to the DDC number building instructions. Due to the referential polysemy of many subject headings, one subject heading can be assigned to several DDC classes (One-to-many mapping). The strength of correspondence of SWD terms and DDC classes is expressed by a code, the so-called "Degree of Determinacy" (abbreviated: Det). In future retrieval systems the Degrees of Determinacy shall be used for ranking as well as for regulation of recall and precision of search results.

The CrissCross web site has more information and many links to publications, presentations, and related projects.

If you can be in the home of CrissCross in July, you are invited to a conference.

Conference title:
Concepts in Context – Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization

Venue:
Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany

Date: July 19th and 20th, 2010

Short conference description:
In cooperation with the German National Library (DNB), the Institute of Information Management (IIM) at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences would like to invite you to attend the Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization Concepts in Context on July 19th and 20th at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany. The first day gives a review of the CrissCross project. The attendance of the event is free of charge. You will find the programme as well as further information and a registration form on the conference website: http://linux2.fbi.fh-koeln.de/cisko2010/index_en.html.

EDUG survey of applications of the DDC

Our friends over at the Technical Issues Working Group of EDUG, the European DDC Users’ Group, have just let us know that they are conducting an online survey of applications of the DDC to help EDUG to plan its activities and determine priorities for technical development. The results will also be shared with OCLC and the DDC editorial team.

They would like to hear not only from European libraries, but from Dewey users all over the world. The survey questionnaire should only take a few minutes to complete and submit. So if your library uses the DDC in one way or the other, please let them know; your participation in the survey is greatly appreciated. The survey is available at http://www.slainte.org.uk/edugit/edugsurvey/survey.cfm.

Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA Midwinter 2010: Presentations + 370 Education Discussion Paper

The presentations from the Dewey Breakfast/Update on January 16, 2010, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston are now available on the Dewey web site at http://www.oclc.org/dewey/news/conferences/default.htm.

Libbie Crawford gave a general DDC product update, and discussed the new screen layouts and features in WebDewey 2.0. Juli Beall presented work to date on improvements to 281.5-281.9 Eastern churches and 340 Law. Proposed changes to the development for 281 Eastern churches are currently out for an initial round of review with a group of experts in Orthodox Christianity. (Note: Rebecca Green is the lead editor on this work, but did not attend ALA.) Juli is working closely with the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) 340 Law Working Group on improvements to 340 Law to address European Union law, criminal courts and procedures, and general issues related to legal systems based on civil law.

I discussed our work on 370 Education. For several years, we have been studying improvements to 370 Education to make the schedule a more useful general framework for the organization of education in a global context. We have focused initially on two areas in the 370 Education schedule: primary education in specific subjects (372.3-372.8) and levels of education (372-374, 378). To date, we have received advice from the EDUG 370 Education Working Group, members of the American Association of School Librarians, and the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC). There is a discussion paper available on the Dewey web site that describes our current proposals. The revisions proposed in the paper are still preliminary, and subject to further development and review. We are seeking comments on the proposed revisions and open questions in the paper by February 27, 2010—interested parties can comment directly here on the blog, or e-mail their comments to me at mitchelj@oclc.org.

I also gave a quick update on the project under way with the OCLC Research to create a BISAC authority file and add Dewey numbers to the records. Michael Panzer wrapped up the meeting with a demonstration of some applications of the current set of Dewey linked data available at dewey.info. He also discussed our plans to link Table 2 (Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Persons) records with FAST geographic headings—besides the usefulness of additional terminology, the Table 2-FAST links will be a path to associate geographic coordinates with Table 2 records (records for FAST geographic headings include geographic coordinates algorithmically assigned from GeoNames). Exciting stuff!

The next Dewey Breakfast/Update will be held in conjunction with the Public Libraries Association 13th National Conference in Portland, Oregon, on Thursday, March 25, 7:00-8:00 a.m. (place to be announced). Mark the date—we expect lots of new developments over the next two months!

EPC Meeting 132

Giles Martin took the photo of EPC at LC on November 17, 2009. From left to right: Karl Debus-López (Library of Congress, standing in for Beacher Wiggins), Jonathan Furner (UCLA), Welna van Eeden (University of South Africa), Lyn McKinney (Billings [MT] Senior High School), Deborah Rose-Lefmann (Northwestern University), Sandra Singh (University of British Columbia), EPC Vice-Chair Anne Robertson (Australian Committee on Cataloguing), EPC Chair Caroline Kent (British Library), Andrea Kappler (Evansville Vanderburgh [IN] Public Library), and David Farris (Library and Archives Canada).

Meeting 132 of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) was held November 16-17 at the Library of Congress. EPC Chair Caroline Kent (British Library) was re-elected for a second two-year term as chair.

In Table 1 (Standard Subdivisions), EPC approved a proposal to recast T1—0286 Waste technology as T1—0286 Green technology (Environmental technology). In Table 2 (Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Persons), EPC gave provisional approval to the revision of Asia Minor and Turkey, and requested additional literary warrant information before approving the expansion for Switzerland.

EPC approved selected updates in the following schedules: 004-006 Computer science; 320 Political science; 361-365 Social problems and services; 390 Customs, etiquette, folklore; 400 Language; 569 Fossil mammals and 599 Mammals; 636 Animal husbandry; 646 Sewing, clothing; 690 Buildings; 720 Architecture; 800 Literature and rhetoric; and various historical periods in 900. EPC also reviewed and approved the full schedules for 670 Manufacturing and 680 Manufacture of products for special uses.

Several discussion papers were considered by the committee. One discussion paper addressed current and proposed practices related to representation and use of standard subdivisions with extended or narrowed meanings, and displaced standard subdivisions. Our investigation of such subdivisions was prompted by two streams of inquiry—a set of questions posed by a group of Dewey Section classifiers preparing training materials (Michael Cantlon, Carolyn Turner, and Ruby Woodard), and our ongoing review of practices related to the representation of standard subdivisions in add tables. EPC approved the discussion paper on 281 Eastern churches for external review. We are seeking advice immediately from the Arabic, Greek, and Russian translation teams; we will also be seeking advice from other experts in Orthodox Christianity. Yvonne Jahns (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek), chair of the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) 340 Law Working Group, was a guest attendee at the meeting. She participated in the extensive discussion of various 340 Law discussion papers; the full 340 Law schedule will be considered at Meeting 133. Yvonne also presented “20 years SWD: German subject authority data prepared for the future.” EPC considered another set of discussion papers, including one from the EDUG 370 Education Working Group, focused on the 370 Education schedule. EPC reviewed revised proposals for updates to 372.3-372.8 Elementary education in specific subjects, and updates to levels of education in 372, 373, and 378. The full 370 Education schedule will also be considered at Meeting 133.

EPC also heard progress reports on Dewey linked data, mixed translation models, and ongoing efforts to use machine assistance in the development of the abridged edition. Thanks to the efforts of EPC member Welna van Eeden, a representation of the DDC Summaries in Afrikaans was added last week to dewey.info (Afrikaans is the tenth language represented in the service).

EPC scheduled a follow-up electronic Meeting 132A (to be held February 1-26, 2010), during which the committee will review the Editorial Rules for standard subdivisions; further work on the machine-assisted abridged model; updates to T1—0288 Maintenance and repair to address issues raised at Meeting 131; updates to the Table 2 provisions for Asia Minor, Turkey, and Switzerland; a possible expansion at 746.92 Costume to match similar provisions for clothing and accessories elsewhere; the updated history periods for Africa based on comments from outside reviewers; and minor updates proposed by the Swedish translation team. If necessary, we will split the meeting into two parts and schedule Electronic Meeting 132B (possibly as a webinar) at a later date. Meeting 133 will be held June 16-18, 2010, at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio.

Dewey Summaries published as Linked Data

For a long time, we wanted to do something with Linked Data. That is, apply Linked Data principles to parts of the Dewey Decimal Classification and present the data as a small “terminology service.” The service should respond to regular HTTP requests with either a machine- or a human-readable presentation of Dewey classes. There should be a URI (and, even better, a web page that delivers a useful description) for every Dewey concept, not just single classes. The data should be presented in a format that is capable of handling rich semantic information and in a way that allows users or user agents to just follow their nose to explore the data. For more complex stuff, the service should offer an API-like query access. Finally, the data that are presented should be reusable by anyone for non-commercial purposes.

Some results of these efforts are now available as dewey.info. We had to come up with a URI pattern for the DDC that would generate persistent identifiers for DDC concepts in a distributed environment. Secondly, we wanted to test out the RDF vocabulary SKOS for creating a representational model to express some of the best nuggets of DDC data (language-independent identifiers, multilingual terminology, and semantic relationships). And finally, because Linked Open Data is not really open when you have to ask someone before you can use it, we wanted to test out a Creative Commons license for easier reuse of DDC data for non-commercial purposes.

We chose the DDC Summaries as a first data set to publish according to Linked Data principles. The latest version of the Summaries, i.e., the top three levels of DDC 22, has been available as a web document for some time. To broaden the possible applications of what now essentially is just tag soup (in only one language), every class had to be identified with a URI and the data had to be presented in a reusable way. Please give it a try at dewey.info. An extended overview of the service can be found here, a slightly more technical description is available on the OCLC Developer Network wiki.

What you see now is only the first step. The intention of dewey.info is to be a platform for Dewey data on the web; more is to come in terms of languages, deeper data, and links to other datasets. The DDC has been widely used as a knowledge organization tool, and the way the URIs have been set up should allow the construction of links based on existing metadata in resource descriptions like bibliographic records.

An example: As the World Digital Library is getting ready to deploy RDF views of its data, instead of just including the Dewey number as a literal (or pointing to some other data source), they could include URIs to dewey.info to tap into the SKOS relationships pointing to broader and narrower classes for retrieval interactions, etc. In turn, this establishes a link from a Dewey class to other vocabularies used concurrently for that resource, to Wikipedia, etc. Links can go both ways and benefit all participating data sets, establishing a graph of Linked Data.

EPC Meeting 131

Giles Martin took the photo of EPC at OCLC on June 12, 2009.  Standing, from left to right: Andrea Kappler (Evansville Vanderburgh [IN] Public Library), Sandra Singh (University of British Columbia), Lyn McKinney (Billings [MT] Senior High School), and Welna van Eeden (University of South Africa); seated, from left to right: Karl Debus-López (Library of Congress, standing in for Beacher Wiggins), David Farris (Library and Archives Canada), EPC Vice-Chair Anne Robertson (Australian Committee on Cataloguing), and Deborah Rose-Lefmann (Northwestern University).

It seems like forever since I’ve written something here, and I’m suppressing the urge to report chronologically on my activities since the last time you heard from me (so stay tuned for reports on three very interesting meetings [one in Houston and two in Vienna] in which I participated back in April).  Today, I’m jumping forward to last week with a quick summary of Meeting 131 of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC), which was held June 10-12 at OCLC.  The meeting was chaired by EPC Vice-Chair Anne Robertson (Australian Committee on Cataloguing).  EPC Chair Caroline Kent (British Library) and new EPC member Jonathan Furner (UCLA [and yes, former DDC assistant editor and creator of 025.431: The Dewey blog]) were unable to attend in person, but e-mailed voluminous comments that were considered by the committee during the meeting.

EPC reviewed the full version of Table 1 (Standard Subdivisions).  One provision was postponed for discussion at Meeting 132 in November 2009: the use of T1—0286 Waste technology to represent green technology.  We'll have more to say about that issue once we sort out the ripple effects throughout the schedules.  In Table 2 (Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Persons), EPC looked mostly to the past in reviewing provisions for the ancient world in T2—3.  Some of the ancient world proposals have implications for the modern world versions of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, Asia Minor, and Turkey.  EPC also approved some adjustments to German administrative units proposed by colleagues at Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, plus the placement of the Barents Sea region, North Calotte, and Sápmi (Lapland).  EPC approved the full version of Table 3 (Subdivisions for the Arts, for Individual Literatures, for Specific Literary Forms), and an expansion for Hakka (Han Chinese who speak Hakka dialect) in Table 5 (Ethnic and National Groups).

EPC approved updates in the following schedules: 004-006 Computer science, 200 Religion, 300 Social sciences, 301-307 Sociology and anthropology, 320 Political science, 330 Economics, 340 Law, 400 Language, 610 Medicine and health, 780 Music, 800 Literature, and 960 History of Africa.  EPC reviewed preliminary versions of 640 Home and family management, 690 Buildings, 710 Civic and landscape art, and 720 Architecture.  On the recommendation of EPC, we plan to post the sewing and clothing sections of 646 shortly for outside comment.  EPC also reviewed a preliminary proposal for updates to sections of 372.3-372.8 Elementary education in specific subjects.  In addition to comments from members and observers on the private EPC mailing list, EPC’s deliberations were informed by reports from the working groups associated with the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) in the areas of law, education, archaeology, and technical issues.

EPC reviewed several research initiatives from the OCLC Office of Research and the Dewey editorial team, plus the latest draft specification for Dewey Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).  We’ll be back with more information on these initiatives later.

EPC scheduled a follow-up electronic Meeting 131A (to be held August 3-28, 2009), during which the committee will address use of the term “encompassing” in the DDC, plus minor issues in 400, 710, and 780.  Meeting 132 will be held November 16-17, 2009, at the Library of Congress.

One other major Dewey event took place last week—June 12 was the last day for updating Dewey data in the current Editorial Support System (ESS).  The new ESS, along with new data formats based on the MARC classification and authority formats, is scheduled to be launched on July 5 (another reason for our recent periods of silence on this blog).  Rebecca wrote a bit about the new ESS last month—watch for more reports shortly.