025.431: The Dewey blog

LCSH-DDC Mapping Hiatus

We have temporarily suspended our biweekly LCSH-DDC mappings to make room for a project to add DDC numbers to the authority records for BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications) subject headings (we’ll have more to say about this project in a month or so).  We plan to resume LCSH-DDC mappings in early 2009.

Updates to the DDC

We often get asked how frequently we update the DDC. The short answer is, we update the DDC continuously. We have a short-term and long-term editorial work plan; we roll out updates from the short-term plan regularly, and the long-term plan as they become available. Of course, lots of new topics come up that don’t appear on any plan and need to be addressed as they emerge. We distribute updated web versions quarterly, and produce snapshots of the underlying databases in print editions about every seven years. Our web versions (WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey, respectively) are available by subscription; we also make XML versions of the underlying databases available to translators, research projects, and other licensees.

You can get a sense of changes to categories by visiting the New and Changed Entries on the Dewey web site. We announce selected updates on the web site; users have to consult the web versions of the DDC to see all changes to the underlying databases. Recent changes have ranged from updates to the treatment of GIS/GPS to an extended version of the area table for ancient and modern Italy that we just completed with the advice of our Italian translators. You can get a flavor of the mapped terminology we announce on a biweekly basis by looking at the LCSH-DDC mappings on the same web site.

Here are some ballpark statistics on additions to the full edition since we published a new print snapshot of the database (DDC 22) in late 2003:

• New categories: ~120/year (new table and schedule numbers, e.g., the new expansion for terrorism at 363.325 introduced in November 2005)
• Additional synthesized numbers: ~450/year (numbers built using the number building instructions to represent concepts explicitly as the need arises, e.g., the synthesized numbers we added for Hurricane Katrina; we added them last year, but you can see an explanation of how the numbers are constructed in the recent blog on hurricanes)
• New mapped terminology from Library of Congress Subject Headings: ~1800/year (e.g., Semantic Web 025.04, Crunk (Music) 782.421649, Wheelchair rugby 796.333)

Mappings, MARC 21, People, Training, and Translations

We’ve been absent from the blogosphere the last two weeks, caught up in a swirl of preparations for the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Seattle.  On Saturday, January 20, we held the Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA Midwinter.  I kicked things off with Dewey Hot Topics, a quick review of several editorial initiatives.  We introduced our plans for the proposed Dewey Training Program (and met with a panel of library educators immediately following the breakfast to review several draft modules in detail).  We briefly discussed our collaboration with Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) to review the treatment of Dewey classification information across the MARC 21 formats.  We met with colleagues from DNB later that same day to discuss several issues in detail—watch for a MARBI discussion paper on the representation of DDC information in the MARC 21 formats at the ALA Annual Conference in June 2007.  We also presented a status report on the proposed guidelines for Dewey numbers in authority files (for more information, see the September 2006 discussion paper and earlier post on the topic). Finally, the "hot topics" included an update on the proposed changes to the captions at T1—08 (History and description with respect to kinds of persons) and T1—092 (Persons) to “Groups of people” and “Biography,” respectively.

Juli followed with a description of current translation projects and the underlying principles that guide Dewey translations.  Michael Panzer (pictured left), University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, wrapped up the session with a review of post-translation Dewey activities in Germany.  Michael discussed approaches to mapping in the MACS and CrissCross projects, and the implications of the expanded use of Dewey in the German national bibliography.

Dewey Numbers in Authority Files + EPC Meeting

As promised in late August, the discussion paper on Dewey Numbers in Authority Files is now available.  This is one of the topics on the agenda for next week’s meeting of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) at the Library of Congress, October 11-13.  Among the other topics on the agenda are updates to research methods, Italian provinces, historical periods for Italian regions, and crimes. The committee will also review topics related to groups of people in Table 1, psychology, and the social sciences.  Ia McIlwaine, chair of the Universal Decimal Classification Consortium and former editor-in-chief of UDC, will join EPC to discuss UDC-DDC cooperation in improving the presentation of religion (see here for an earlier discussion of the topic), and Diane Vizine-Goetz (OCLC Office of Research) will brief the committee on current DDC research initiatives.  We’ll post daily reports from the meeting next week.

Dewey Numbers in Authority Files

Juli and I have been in Seoul this week attending the World Library and Information Congress (72nd IFLA General Conference and Council). Each year in conjunction with the IFLA Conference, OCLC hosts a meeting for Dewey translators and representatives of national libraries and bibliographies using the DDC. Twenty-seven librarians, representing DDC projects in fifteen countries, attended this year’s meeting on August 23. At last year's meeting, participants chose “Dewey numbers in authority files” as the theme for the 2006 meeting. I opened the meeting with a general discussion of the differences in mapping terminology to Dewey numbers versus loading a Dewey number in a subject authority file record. I presented our (very much) draft guidelines for loading Dewey numbers in LCSH (no immediate plans on the horizon, but we are thinking about what it means to do so). Our general principles can be summarized as follows: 1) the subject entity represented by the subject heading should approximate the whole of the meaning of the Dewey number or be explicitly in standing room at the number; and 2) the definition of the relationship between the heading and the Dewey number is contained in the Dewey record. Open questions include whether these guidelines are generalizable across subject heading systems, and if greater specificity is needed in the relationships currently expressed in Dewey records. We’re in the midst of preparing a paper on the topic of Dewey in authority files (including a discussion of the relevance of specifications for relationships such as those found in the current SKOS proposal). We'll post a link here as soon as the paper is ready.

Federica Paradisi (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze) discussed the experiments to load Dewey numbers in Nuovo Soggettario Italiano. Yvonne Jahns (Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) discussed CrissCross, a project to associate DDC with SWD. The Italian guidelines are a bit more restrictive than those proposed by our team and the German team--in the proposed Italian guidelines, only one number is currently permitted in a subject authority record. The German guidelines include three levels of “precision” to represent the relationship between the heading and the Dewey number. In the final presentation on Dewey numbers in authority files, Ed O’Neill (OCLC Office of Research) described his recent efforts in collaboration with colleague Diane Vizine-Goetz to prototype the inclusion of Dewey numbers in FAST geographic records.

Representatives from several translation projects presented updates, starting with an overview of the Vietnamese translation by Michael Robinson (Hong Kong Institute of Education and Project Manager, DDC Translation Project, RMIT International University Vietnam). Louis Cabral (ASTED) reported on plans to produce a French translation of DDC 22 in second quarter 2007. Magdalena Svanberg (Kungl. biblioteket) discussed the study underway in Sweden to consider adoption of the DDC and development of a mixed Swedish/English version of DDC 22. Federica Paradisi reported on the completion of the Italian translation of Abridged Edition 14 earlier this year, and the planned publication of the Italian translation of DDC 22 in early 2007. She highlighted the need for cooperation among translation teams and the Dewey editorial team to introduce new viewpoints in law and education, and to develop extensions for general topics related to the European Union. Yvonne Jahns mentioned that Projekt DDC Deutsch plans to relaunch Melvil (the German web version of Dewey) shortly. Patrice Landry (Schweizerische Landesbibliothek) commented that the MACS and CrissCross projects are working together to explore multilingual access to bibliographic records.

In the discussion period at the end of the meeting, Gordon Dunsire (University of Strathclyde and member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals [CILIP] DDC Committee) commented that perhaps we need a variety of approaches, including some relaxed ones, to meet the goal of distributed interoperability. His comment led nicely into the group's selection of the theme for 2007 meeting in Durban, South Africa: "How can we all work together?"

Mathematical or not?

Last year we talked about Sudoku (Great new way to waste time catches on fast), and followed that up with a blog about Kakuro (Do you do or do you don't 'doku?). There, we said that: “We at Dewey Manor don't think Sudoku really counts as a mathematical game, since it doesn't require players to carry out any mathematical operations,” and “[Kakuro] is really a test of logic, not of arithmetic.” So we assigned Sudoku and Kakuro the Dewey number 793.73 Puzzles and puzzle games, and not 793.74 Mathematical games and recreations.

However, in the comments on the first blog, Thom Hickey and Dennis McGovern disagreed with us.  Dennis (writing under the handle of “LCDennis”) said:

I disagree with the other residents of Dewey Manor in that I think Sudoku really counts as a mathematical game, even though it doesn't require players to carry out any mathematical operations. The popular version of Sudoku (i.e., the one described in the 1st 20 Google results) is played using numbers (mathematical symbols). I think of number games as mathematical recreations, and I agree with the LC subject heading (sh85082131) which has Number games as a 450 ref. to Mathematical recreations. To my way of thinking Guardian's Godoku (which doesn't have much literary warrant) is another game: a logical game using letters that should also class in 793.74.

He also pointed us to the Wikipedia article on Sudoku and to web pages on Sudoku and related puzzles by the Australian mathematicians Anne Street and Diane Donovan.

These things have way of coming back to bite you, and we have just dealt with assigning Dewey numbers to the LCSH Weekly List containing “Sudoku.”  (Weekly List 2005 no. 37 -- the list with “Kakuro” is still in our future).  And we’ve had a change of heart: we’ve decided that Sudoku is a game involving Latin squares, a topic within 511.64 Permutations and combinations, while Kakuro involves 519.77 Integer programming.  The Wikipedia even has an article on the Mathematics of Sudoku.

510 Mathematics is a large topic, and now includes a lot more than traditional topics like algebra, calculus, geometry and statistics: it includes many other formalized and axiomatised systems, such as 511.3 Mathematical logic, 511.6 Combinatorics, and 519.7 Programming (which is not the same topic as the mathematics of computer programming, but includes linear programming and nonlinear programming).  Both Sudoku and Kakuro fit within this broader concept of mathematics, and belong in 793.74 Mathematical games and recreations.

Strike Two!

About two months ago, we delighted Classification Club members with 331.892829225209712743090511, a 27-digit DDC number mapped to the Canadian Subject Heading “Buhler Versatile Inc. Strike, Winnipeg, Man., 2000-2001.”  As it turns out, strikes are fertile territory for the Classification Club.  The latest list of LCSH-DDC mappings includes the LCSH “Fire Fighters’ Dispute, Great Britain, 2002-2004” mapped to 331.89281363370941090511. This 23-digit DDC number certainly would have given the first one a run for the money if only the geographic notation had been longer (Winnipeg has more digits in Table 2 than Great Britain).  Anyway, the number is constructed from 331.89281 Strikes in industries and occupations other than extractive, manufacturing, construction + 363.37 Fire hazards (the number for fire prevention and fire fighting, the two chief activities of fire fighters) + T1—09 (Geographic treatment) + T2—41 (Great Britain) + T1—090511 (2000–2009).

Would you Adam and Eve it?

The Believer! It's "intellectual yet playful." It's "rigorous yet amiable." It featured Tintin, Mark E. Smith, and Ian McEwan on its cover in successive months. How could it be anything other than the Dewey blog's favorite magazine? And that's even before you consider that the Believer is the only popular magazine (as far as we know) to tempt readers with featurettes that consist entirely of lists of DDC numbers recently mapped to Library of Congress subject headings. Here, for example, is an extract from the list published in February 2006 (on the same page as an interview with stand-up comedian Demetri Martin) of "Dewey Decimal Classifications of various endings":

Road closures—388.312
Retraction letters—070.44
Lost articles in literature—T3C—355
Ex-football players—796.33092, 796.332092
Same-sex divorce—306.89

Thanks to Rivka Galchen and Aaron Harnly for getting the Dewey word out in this way. Needless to say, we're all believers here at the Manor.

Goodnight, Irina

And so it came to pass that the Winter Olympics stopped. Taking time out from her HBO hit Da Ali G Show, Sasha Cohen narrowly failed to win the figure-skating gold for the US; Jamaica, disappointingly, missed the bobsleigh title by a whisker once again; and the Dewey blog was left to ponder why, if he's really so speedy, "Speedy" Peterson doesn't compete in an event where speed is more directly a factor, like a race or something. Talking of figure skating, we wanted to let you know that, although the subject has been listed in the DDC since, ooh, at least 1989 (at 796.912, under 796.9 Ice and snow sports), the Library of Congress has only recently created a subject heading for it, which we mapped to the DDC just the other week. Nice!

All-New Dewey Teaser: DOA?

Okay, so the All-New Dewey Teaser went down like a mouthful of soggy spaghetti. How could all those expensive focus groups have got it so wrong? Needless to say, the minion whose idea this was has been summarily dismissed and, last we heard, is currently attempting to eke out a living hawking his sad collection of keywords to search-engine advertisers. All that remains of the whole sordid affair is our promise to tell you precisely where we ended up deciding to class works on neoliberalism, educational attainment, and phishing. Without further ado, or indeed any ado at all, let's give it up for 320.51 Liberalism (not 320.513 Modern liberalism), 306.43 Education (under 306 Culture and institutions), and both 005.8 Data security and 364.163 Fraud. Controversial? Nous? If you think so, let us know. Otherwise, what we really want to know is: Does the All-New Dewey Teaser really have all the appeal of a wet Wednesday in Luton (T2—42567)? Or could it work if we tweaked it a little? Or does anyone have any better ideas for getting weekends off to an appropriately Deweytastic start?