025.431: The Dewey blog

WebDewey and Library of Congress Subject Headings

Among the Library of Congress Subject Headings mapped to Dewey numbers in earlier versions of WebDewey were some labeled "PPT" because they came from the 2001 publication People, Places & Things: A List of Popular Library of Congress Subject Headings with Dewey Numbers. Those headings were not included in WebDewey 2.0 because the mappings needed to be updated. 

The process of updating has begun.  Thus far, PPT headings mapped to 500–599 have been updated and restored to WebDewey.  The headings are no longer labeled "PPT" because they are now like other editorially mapped headings; there is no longer a need to warn users that they may be out of date.  A few examples may illustrate.

The LCSH "Polynomials" is now mapped to 512.9422 Polynomial equations.  The history box for that number has this information:

expanded from 512.942
2003, Edition 22

In PPT, the LCSH "Polynomials" was mapped to the old number, 512.942.  An example of a work with the LCSH "Polynomials" classed in 512.9422 Polynomial equations is Polynomials.

(To learn more about the history box now available in WebDewey, see the previous blogs "WebDewey 2.0 Enhancements" and "Expansions from DDC 22 to DDC 23.")

The LCSH "Algorithms" is now mapped to 518.1 Algorithms.  The history box for that number has this information:

formerly located in 511.8
2003, Edition 22

In PPT, the LCSH "Algorithms" was mapped to the old number, 511.8.  An example of a work classed in 518.1 Algorithms is Algorithms.  The work has both the LCSH "Algorithms—Textbooks" and "Computer algorithms—Textbooks," but it emphasizes the mathematical ideas behind algorithms.

The LCSH "Pacific Ocean" is now mapped to the built number 551.4614 Pacific Ocean (built with 551.461 Specific oceans and seas, coastal saltwater bodies plus 4 from T2—164 Pacific Ocean, following instructions at 551.4613–551.4617 Specific oceans and seas). The history box for 551.4614 Pacific Ocean has this information:

formerly located in 551.465
2003, Edition 22

In PPT, the LCSH "Pacific Ocean" was mapped to the old number, 551.465.  An example of a work with the LCSH "Pacific Ocean" classed in 551.4614 Pacific Ocean is Pacific Ocean. The work is interdisciplinary, and 551.4614 is the interdisciplinary number for the Pacific Ocean.  In the upward hierarchy, at 551.46 Oceanography and submarine geology, is the class-here note: "Class here . . . interdisciplinary works on marine science, on oceans and seas."  That note has hierarchical force.

Add Table Notation in WebDewey (or, DDC Has Not Become Colon Classification)

We were asked, "Why are there colons in some numbers in WebDewey?  Is that a glitch?"  No, those numbers represent add table notation; the part before the colon gives the DDC number or number span where the add table is located, and the part following the colon represents the notation in the add table. For example, a search in All Fields for "drug therapy" will produce a long list of search results that includes:

616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy

If you click that entry in the search results, you will see the add table under 616.1-616.9
Specific diseases displayed as a complete table, much as in the printed book.  Because it is a large add table, you will need to scroll down to see the specific add table entry in that print-like display:

061    Drug therapy

Because you have already seen the entry 616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy in your search results, you know where to look as you scroll down in the add table. 

Alternatively, since you already know what add table entry you seek, you could use the hierarchy display at the left of the screen to drill down to 616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy.  Or if you have scrolled down in the display of the full add table and find the full add table with all its entries and notes a bit overwhelming, you could use the hierarchy display to focus on the entries in the upward hierarchy that are relevant to drug therapy.  If you click the 061 link in the add table display in WebDewey, you can see 616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy displayed as a separate record, with its own upward and downward hierarchy, including broader or narrower add table entries.  Here are the add table entries in the hierarchy for 616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy:

616.1-616.9:05-09 Preventive measures, therapy, pathology, psychosomatic medicine, case histories
616.1-616.9:06 Therapy
616.1-616.9:061-069 Specific therapies
616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy
616.1-616.9:0610724 Experimental research

If you click the entries in the upward hierarchy, you will find notes with hierarchical force in each one.  Those same notes appear also in the print-like display of the full add table; you can choose which way seems most convenient to find them.

For browsing DDC numbers, you also have a choice: show the add table notation as separate entries in the browse results, or hide the add table notation and show only the DDC number or number span where the add table is located. To hide the add table notation, click Preferences, then under Add Table Notation Options click Hide.  Then if you browse for 616.1 the entire add table will be represented by one line:

616.1-616.9 Specific diseases

If you click Show, then browse for 616.1, the add table notation will be represented by many separate lines, beginning with standard subdivisions:

616.1-616.9:001 Philosophy and theory
 
616.1-616.9:002 Miscellany
 
616.1-616.9:[0023] The subject as a profession, occupation, hobby
 
616.1-616.9:0028 Auxiliary techniques and procedures; apparatus, equipment, materials
 
616.1-616.9:00284 Apparatus, equipment, materials
 
616.1-616.9:[00287] Testing and measurement
 
616.1-616.9:003-006 Standard subdivisions

If you frequently use a particular add table and know approximately what add table notation you seek, you can use the form of notation with the colon as a search or browse term.  For example, you can search the Dewey Numbers index with 616.1-616.9:06* (the asterisk is a truncation symbol) and get six add table entries all relating to therapy.  Similarly, you can browse in Dewey Numbers (with Captions) for 616.1-616.9:06 (no truncation symbol needed for browsing) and see a display that begins:

616.1-616.9:05 Preventive measures
 
616.1-616.9:06 Therapy
 
616.1-616.9:060724 Experimental research
 
616.1-616.9:061-069 Specific therapies
 
616.1-616.9:061 Drug therapy

616.1-616.9:0610724 Experimental research
 
616.1-616.9:062-069 Other therapies

Abridged Edition 15 in WebDewey

Last week, Geneva Norton posted the following question on the blog: "Why is the Abridged 15 not going to be a part of WebDewey?"  In the sense that Abridged Edition 15 is a logical abridgment of DDC 23, the new abridged edition is already in WebDewey.  If you have "Show Segmentation Mark" and "Show Segmentation Instruction" checked as "Show" under Preferences in WebDewey, you can determine the equivalent Abridged Edition 15 number.  We realize that it’s not always easy to decode the segmentation instructions; a project is under way to improve them.

We have decided not to continue with a separate version of WebDewey based on Abridged Edition 15 because of the small numbers of subscribers to the current abridged web product (less than 10% of the number of subscribers to the full version of WebDewey).  (In contrast, the total number of print copies of Abridged Edition 14 sold nearly matched the number of print sets of DDC 22 sold.)  Where does this decision leave current Abridged WebDewey users?  We are exploring a number of ways to make WebDewey hospitable to abridged users beyond the current segmentation information.  On March 19, there will be an invitational webinar aimed at current Abridged WebDewey subscribers to get feedback and address any concerns.  Current subscribers will be contacted directly by Libbie Crawford, Dewey Product Manager, with webinar registration information.  We’ll certainly share the outcomes from that meeting with blog readers.

 

Expansions from DDC 22 to DDC 23

During the February 7 webinar "DDC 23 Update" (available here), we received the question: "Is there a way to track all expansions from DDC 22 to DDC 23?"

"New Features in Edition 23," which appears in volume 1 of the print DDC 23 and is also available here, summarizes the expansions introduced in DDC 23 or in an interim update to DDC 22 prior to the publication of Edition 23, but does not list every new number.

A previous blog, "WebDewey 2.0 Enhancements," describes the history-of-numbers information now available in WebDewey 2.0.  Today a search for the term "expanded" in either the All Fields index or the All Dewey index yields "4067 records found."  The first record retrieved is relevant to the question about expansions from DDC 22 to DDC 23; the record for T1—0141 Discourse analysis has a History box with the following information:

expanded from T1--014
2011-04, Edition 23

The second record retrieved, however, is not relevant, because it represents an old expansion; the record for T1—0284 Apparatus, equipment, materials has a History box with the following information:

expanded from T1--028
1996, Edition 21

Unfortunately, at present, there is no simple way to search for only the new expansions.  One can retrieve on terms like "expanded" in the first part of a history note and on the DDC number in the note (T1—014 and T1—028 in the examples above), but not on the date or edition number in the second part of the note.  In the aforementioned blog, we noted that we were particularly interested in learning more about how you might make use of the history information.  This is the first feedback we’ve received!  We will explore adding the edition associated with history information as an indexed and searchable element in WebDewey sometime in the coming year.

Meanwhile, one possible approach is to search for "expanded" in a range of Dewey numbers, using Advanced Search and the truncation symbol asterisk (*)—preferably with guidance from "New Features in Edition 23" about where to find new numbers. For example, "New Features" includes the following for Table 2 Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Biography:

—494 Switzerland
. . . . .
            Expanded

The following search yields 171 records, all of which represent new numbers:

Term:     t2--494*    
Index:    Dewey Numbers
and
Term:     expanded    
Index:    All Dewey

WebDewey 2.0 Enhancements

WebDewey 2.0 users, be ready for a nice surprise when you log in today.  We have introduced some major enhancements plus cosmetic improvements that we hope will delight and excite you as much as they do the Dewey team.  Over the next few days we’ll be discussing the variety of improvements and new features that you’ll find in the system, but let’s start today with the two big ones, 1) the history of numbers and 2) improved identification of built numbers and Manual notes.

We have had the history of numbers codified in our internal DDC data files going back to DDC 20 (1989), but we have never had a way to make this deep historical information routinely available to users until now.  Starting today, WebDewey users will be able to access the contents of any MARC 21 685 History Note field associated with a particular class by clicking on arrow in the right-hand corner of the History box on the record display page.  For example, look at the class record for 005.3.  If you open the History box (click on the arrow in the right-hand corner of the box), you’ll see the following information:

General purpose application programs relocated to 005.5
2003, Edition 22

(We reformatted the underlying MARC 21 representation to make it more readable; in our internal database, we have the following version of the same information coded in a 685 field:  685 20  $t General purpose application programs $i relocated to $a 005.5 $d 2003 $2 22 $9 ess=685.)

If you click on the link to 005.5, that link will take you directly to the record display for 005.5.  Open the History box and you will find additional information about the history of 005.5:

formerly located in 005.3
2003, Edition 22

Specific programs with interdisciplinary applications formerly located in 005.3042
2003, Edition 22

There’s one other major change in today’s installation: the inclusion of new icons to identify built numbers and Manual notes.  Built numbers are represented by a puzzle piece icon; Manual notes are represented by a book icon.  Both types of icons are included in search results.  For example, the search results for a search on 005.3 include the Manual note 005.3 (identified with the book icon) and the built number 005.3742 (identified with the puzzle piece icon).  The puzzle piece icon also is used to identify built numbers in browse results.  On the individual record display screen, the Manual icon appears next to the number and caption for the Manual note (for example, look at the Manual note for 005.3).   In hierarchical displays for built numbers, the puzzle piece icon can appear anywhere in the hierarchical display for the number.  For example, display the record for 338.47004 Computer industry.  In the hierarchical display, the built number icon appears next to 338.47004, and also next to two built numbers in the downward hierarchy, 338.4700411 and 338.470046.  (If you don’t see the icons associated with the aforementioned examples, it may be because relevant information has been cached in your browser.  If you want to see the icons immediately and do not want to wait until the cache is refreshed, you can press <ctrl> + <F5> inside a WebDewey screen associated with one of the examples, which will cause your browser to reload the cached information.)

We’d love to hear from WebDewey users about the usefulness of these new features.  We’re especially interested in learning more about how you might make use of the history information.

Stay tuned for more information about recent and planned improvements to WebDewey! 

International Dewey Users Meeting

OCLC will host the annual International Dewey Users Meeting (formerly known as the Dewey Translators Meeting) in conjunction with the World Library and Information Congress (76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly) in Göteborg, Sweden.  The meeting will be held Friday, 13 August, 16:00-18:00, in Swedish Conference Centre, Meeting Room J2.  The agenda includes presentations on WebDewey 2.0, the Swedish mixed translation, the expansion of 297 Islam under way in cooperation with the Arabic translation team, and activities of the European DDC Users’ Group.  Please register here by 4 August if you plan to attend the meeting.

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!

My Excellent Scandinavian Adventure

I spent the last week of January and the first week of February in Norway and Sweden.  The purpose of my trip was threefold:

Work on the mixed translation project with colleagues from the National Library of Norway and the National Library of Sweden (I’ve blogged about our mixed translation work previously—see our presentation from ISKO 2008)

Speak at Kunnskapsorganisasjonsdagene 2009 in Oslo, followed by a meeting with the Norwegian Classification Committee (NKKI)

Speak at a Dewey—let’s do it! in Stockholm, followed by a day of meetings with catalogers, subject experts, and members of the Libris department at the National Library of Sweden

I spent over a week in Oslo, most of it working on the mixed translation project at the National Library of Norway.  Ingebjørg Rype, Karen Nisja Domaas, and I worked on developing a mixed Norwegian-English version of 006 and 616-616.1 (back in DC, my colleague Rebecca Green performed magic on the mixed translation files each evening to transform the English-language instructions into their Norwegian counterparts for Dewey records in Norwegian).  Magdalena Svanberg (National Library of Sweden) joined us in Oslo at the midpoint of my visit to continue work on the mixed translation, and to discuss future project directions.  Inger Johanne Christiansen gave me a wonderful behind-the-scenes tour of the National Library of Norway (a highpoint of which was the chance to look at some Ibsen manuscripts that happened to be out for an Ibsen scholar’s visit later in the day).  On February 3, Magdalena, Ingebjørg, and I gave presentations at Kunnskapsorganisasjonsdagene 2009.  Later that day, we met with NKKI members to discuss the needs of Norwegian librarians in the design of the next Norwegian translation.  We also discussed the treatment of Nordkalotten (the area north of the Arctic Circle in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia). On the following day, Magdalena and Ingebjørg participated in a Dewey workshop sponsored by the National Library of Norway, NKKI, and JBI (the three of us used a break in the workshop to squeeze in a final meeting on the mixed translation research project). 

After the workshop in Oslo ended, Magdalena and I flew to Stockholm for a whirlwind two days of meetings.  The first was occupied by a full-day seminar on Dewey (the aforementioned “Dewey—let’s do it!”).  On the day following the seminar, I met with catalogers and subject experts at the National Library of Sweden to discuss use of the DDC in general, mappings between Svenska ämnesord (SAO) and Dewey, and the addition of Dewey numbers to SAO records.  We also managed to have two side discussions about classification of visual materials and proposed changes to the 780 Music schedule. (After my return home, I shared draft documents on both topics with our Swedish colleagues, and we have already received back preliminary reactions to the proposed changes in 780 Music [we will be posting a discussion paper on 780 Music for public comment shortly].)  I also briefed members of the Libris department on our work on MARC, RDF/SKOS, and URI representations of DDC data, plus a prototype DDC history-of-concepts web service.

During the course of my trip, the National Library of Norway made a decision to proceed with a web version of a Norwegian translation of the DDC, and the administration of the National Library of Sweden awarded preliminary funding to a group headed by Magdalena Svanberg to launch work on the Swedish translation of the DDC in September 2009.  Also, three more Swedish university libraries (Göteborg, Linköping, and Gävle) announced that they would make the switch to the DDC.

My colleague Lorcan Dempsey often writes about the need to make our data work harder.  The underlying DDC data files (including the set of interoperable translations), the mappings between Dewey and other terminology resources, and the large body of content categorized by Dewey available in WorldCat and elsewhere are incredible resources in the networked information environment.  We are focused right now on a number of efforts to make the DDC data available in web-friendly formats for human and machine interaction.  The challenge remains to find ways to make our DDC data work harder.

Designing identifiers for the DDC

Although the Dewey Decimal Classification is currently available on the web to subscribers as WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey in the OCLC Connexion service and in an XML version to licensees, OCLC does not provide any “web services” based on the DDC. By web services, we mean presentation of the DDC to other machines (not humans) for uses such as searching, browsing, classifying, mapping, harvesting, and alerting.

In order to build web-accessible services based on the DDC, several elements have to be considered. One of these elements is the design of an appropriate Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) structure for Dewey.

The design goals of mapping the entity model of the DDC into an identifier space can be summarized as follows:

• Common locator for Dewey concepts and associated resources for use in web services and web applications
• Use-case-driven, but not directly related to and outlasting a specific use case (persistency)
• Retraceable path to a concept rather than an abstract identification, reusing a means of identification that is already present in the DDC and available in existing metadata

We have been working closely with our colleagues in the OCLC Office of Research (especially Andy Houghton as well as Eric Childress, Diane Vizine-Goetz, and Stu Weibel) on a preliminary identifier syntax. The basic identifier format we are currently exploring is:

http://dewey.info/{aspect}/{object}/{locale}/{type}/{version}/{resource}

where

• {aspect} is the aspect associated with an {object}—the current value set of aspect contains “concept”, “scheme”, and “index”; additional ones are under exploration
• {object} is a type of {aspect}
• {locale} identifies a Dewey translation
• {type} identifies a Dewey edition type and contains, at a minimum, the values “edn” for the full edition or “abr” for the abridged edition
• {version} identifies a Dewey edition version
• {resource} identifies a resource associated with an {object} in the context of {locale}, {type}, and {version}

Some examples of identifiers for concepts follow:

<http://dewey.info/concept/338.4/en/edn/22/>

This identifier is used to retrieve or identify the 338.4 concept in the English-language version of Edition 22.

 <http://dewey.info/concept/338.4/de/edn/22/>

This identifier is used to retrieve or identify the 338.4 concept in the German-language version of Edition 22.

 <http://dewey.info/concept/333.7-333.9/>

This identifier is used to retrieve or identify the 333.7–333.9 concept across all editions and language versions.

 <http://dewey.info/concept/333.7-333.9/about.skos>

This identifier is used to retrieve a SKOS representation of the 333.7-333.9 concept (using the “resource” element).

There are several open issues at this preliminary stage of development:

Use cases: URIs need to represent the range of statements or questions that could be submitted to a Dewey web service. Therefore, it seems that some general questions have to be answered first: What information does an agent have when coming to a Dewey web service? What kind of questions will such an agent ask?

Placement of the {locale} component: It is still an open question if the {locale} component should be placed after the {version} component instead (<http://dewey.info/concept/338.4/edn/22/en>) to emphasize that the most important instantiation of a Dewey class is its edition, not its language version. From a services point of view, however, it could make more sense to keep the current arrangement, because users are more likely to come to the service with a present understanding of the language version they are seeking without knowing the specifics of a certain edition in which they are trying to find topics.

Identification of other Dewey entities: The goal is to create a locator that does not answer all, but a lot of questions that could be asked about the DDC. Which entities are missing but should be surfaced for services or user agents? How will those services or agents interact with them? Should some entities be rendered in a different way as presented? For example, (how) should the DDC Summaries be retrievable? Would it be necessary to make the DDC Manual accessible through this identifier structure?