025.431: The Dewey blog

Translations, Translations, Translations

Over the last three weeks, we’ve had that “If it’s Tuesday, it must be Arabic” feeling (with apologies to the movie title). We’ve had visits from members of the Arabic and Swedish translation teams, plus discussions with the Norwegian and Spanish translation teams (by e-mail and teleconference, respectively).

Ann Tobin, a member of the translation team at the National Library of Sweden, paid a working visit to the Dewey Editorial Office at the Library of Congress November 30-December 4. The Swedish translation will employ a mixed approach. The Introduction, Glossary, and Tables 1-6 will be translated into Swedish. The top levels of the schedules plus the full hierarchy of classes down to and including classes with a defined level of literary warrant will be translated into Swedish; the rest of the classes will be ingested directly into the translation as English-language records. Manual records will be translated if associated with classes in Swedish; otherwise, they will be included in English. The translation will be accompanied by separate indexes in Swedish and English. (For more information on the mixed translation model, see here; for more information about the adoption of the DDC in Sweden, see here.) During Ann’s visit, we reviewed the Swedish versions of the Introduction; Glossary; and Table 1, 4, and 6. We also discussed proposals and issues related to geographic areas, education, animal husbandry (yes, a new provision for reindeer farming will be coming to the DDC soon!), sports, literature, and historical periods. Additional topics of discussion included training, translation workflows, and WebDewey 2.0. Lest you think it was all work and no play, we managed to have many interesting meals together (and helped Ann execute her plan of trying a variety of hamburgers across the city) and even caught a world premiere of a new piano concerto by U.S. composer Jennifer Higdon at the Kennedy Center (see here for a review of the performance we attended together).

Our colleagues on the Spanish translation team in Colombia have just completed work on a local translation support system that produces DDC data in an XML format (one compatible with our current format). We expect to start reviewing parts of the new full Spanish translation in early 2010.

Meanwhile, our colleagues at the National Library of Norway are busy planning for a new Norwegian translation of the full DDC (previous Norwegian translations have been customized abridgments of the DDC). Work will begin in early 2010.

Finally, yesterday (yes, Arabic on Tuesday) we had a visit from Dr. Sohair Wastawy (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) to discuss progress on the Arabic translation of the full DDC. We reviewed the translation timetable, plus the latest version of the proposed expansion for Islam.

Dewey Translators Meeting at IFLA 2009

Forty-five librarians from seventeen countries attended the Dewey Translators Meeting at the World Library and Information Congress (75^th IFLA General Conference and Council) in Milan on August 25. We started the Dewey Translators Meeting in 2003 at IFLA in Berlin as a forum to discuss issues of interest to DDC translation teams (hence the name), but the focus of the meeting has broadened over the years to embrace topics of interest to a wide range of attendees beyond the core group of translation partners.

The first speaker at this year’s meeting, Marie Baliková (Czech National Library), discussed a UDC/DDC crosswalk developed by the Czech National Library for the purpose of collection assessment. The Czech National Library uses the UDC as its primary knowledge organization tool, but makes use of a UDC/DDC crosswalk to enable use of a DDC-based tool for collection assessment. Marie also touched more general issues in knowledge organization—challenges in the creation of crosswalks, identification of weaknesses in classification systems, and problems in the presentation of captions to end users.

Julianne Beall discussed the use of Dewey in the World Digital Library (WDL) project with a focus on the draft guidelines for classifying photographs for the project. We developed the guidelines in consultation with Dewey Section classifiers involved in classifying photographs for WDL. Diane Vizine-Goetz presented an update on two OCLC Office of Research initiatives, Classify, a prototype web service designed to support the assignment of classification numbers, and WorldCat work pages, a project to create rich descriptions from catalog data resulting in a page for every work. Sample WorldCat work pages are available at http://frbr.oclc.org/research/pages/000021759.html. Finally, I presented a brief update on the some changes in the representation of the DDC in MARC 21 formats, design plans for WebDewey 2.0, and the launch of DDC linked data.

We were fortunate to have the heads of all four European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) working groups in attendance at the Dewey Translators Meeting. Yvonne Jahns (DNB) discussed the work of the EDUG 340 Law Working Group, which has been considering European Union law, theory of sources of law, juristic acts, criminal courts, criminal procedure, and legal professionals. A preliminary report is expected before the end of September, and Yvonne will attend EPC Meeting 132 in November 2009 to discuss the report. Anne-Céline Lambotte (Université de la Méditerranée) reported on the work the EDUG 370 Education Working Group has done on levels of education and subjects in primary education. The 340 and 370 working groups had enough members present in Florence the week before at “Looking at the Past and Preparing for the Future,” an IFLA satellite meeting held August 20-21, to hold a meeting on August 20. Magdalena Svanberg (National Library of Sweden) discussed the EDUG 930 Archaeology Working Group’s concerns about the interdisciplinary provisions for archaeology at 930.1, within 930 History of ancient world to ca. 499. Archaeology of a place after 499 or a place not provided for in T2—3 The ancient world is classed with the history of the place in 940-990 General history of modern world. Gordon Dunsire (University of Strathclyde) reported on the recommendation of the EDUG Technical Issues Working Group that the Dewey editorial team publish the Dewey URI specification. The Dewey URI specification is one of the underpinnings of the recently launched dewey.info service—we plan to issue a discussion paper shortly based on the version of the specification presented at EPC Meeting 131. In the open reporting session, Sohair Wastawy (Bibliotecha Alexandrina) updated the group on the progress of the Arabic translation. We are working together toward the goal of publishing the Arabic translation of DDC 23 near simultaneously with the publication of the English-language edition. By the way, the 2010 EDUG meeting will be held at Bibliotecha Alexandrina in April 2010.

Dewey Translators Meeting at IFLA 2009

OCLC will host the annual Dewey Translators Meeting in conjunction with the World Library and Information Congress (75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly) on Tuesday, 25 August, 16:00-18:00, Orange 3 Meeting Room, Milano Convention Centre.  The agenda includes presentations on the UDC/DDC crosswalk developed by the Czech National Library for the purpose of collection assessment, the classification of photographs in the World Digital Library Project, Dewey research activities, and changes in the formats for the representation and distribution of the DDC.  Please register here if you wish to attend the meeting.

New Assistant Editor of the DDC

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Michael Panzer as assistant editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), effective today.  Michael, who from 2002 to 2005 headed the technical team that translated Dewey into German, is the first member of a Dewey translation team to be appointed assistant editor.

Since joining OCLC in 2007, Michael has served as global product manager of taxonomy services at OCLC.  Along with colleagues in the OCLC Office of Research, Michael has been heavily involved in representations of the DDC for semantic web applications.  His recent focus has been on the development of a prototype Dewey history-of-concepts web service.  Michael will continue to serve as a technical advisor to Dewey research projects and web services, but his current business and licensing responsibilities will be assumed by OCLC Dewey product manager Libbie Crawford.

Prior to joining OCLC, Michael worked at Cologne University of Applied Sciences, where he was team leader of CrissCross, a research project funded by the German Research Foundation focused on mapping SWD, DDC, RAMEAU, and LCSH.   Michael has an MA from Heinrich Heine University (Düsseldorf) in German Literature with a minor in Information Science.  He also attended the University of California, Davis, on a four-month research scholarship.

Michael will continue to be based at OCLC headquarters in Dublin, Ohio.  Please join us in congratulating Michael on this important appointment.

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.

Sweden Goes Dewey: Part 2

Earlier this month, we reported on the National Library of Sweden’s decision to adopt the DDC. Two more events have happened since that announcement.  On December 5, the governing board of the Swedish Library Association discussed the importance of using the same classification system throughout Sweden, and recommended that Swedish libraries in general consider adopting the DDC.  Stockholm University Library has become the first library to follow the National Library of Sweden in the decision to switch from SAB to DDC—the library executive group announced the decision to adopt the DDC on December 17.

More discussion among Swedish libraries will take place early next year.  An announcement has just been posted for a seminar on Dewey and the role of classification in a national and international context, to be held February 5 at the National Library of Sweden.

Sweden Goes Dewey

The National Library of Sweden has announced its intention to adopt the DDC.  The decision was approved on November 21 by National Librarian Gunnar Sahlin on the advice and recommendation of the national advisory board.  The National Library of Sweden has used Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek, the Swedish classification system popularly known as SAB, since 1956. The national bibliography has been arranged by SAB since 1921. A high-level concordance already exists between the two systems, and the DDC Summaries are available in Swedish in the DeweyBrowser.

The switch from SAB to the DDC has been under study for some time at the National Library of Sweden.  In April 2005, I had the pleasure of participating in a seminar and training session in Stockholm to introduce Dewey to Swedish librarians and to discuss possible approaches to translation.  In 2006, Magdalena Svanberg (currently Executive Officer of the Department of National Co-operation at the National Library of Sweden) headed a study group (Study 3 of the Catalogue Survey) to explore the switch to the DDC.  It was also Magdalena who first suggested that we investigate models for mixed translations of the DDC.

Magdalena notes that some other libraries in Sweden are also expected to make a similar decision to switch from SAB to DDC.  The timetable for the switch at the National Library and elsewhere is still under study.  A critical element will be the existence of a useful Swedish (or a mixed Swedish-English) DDC edition to support Dewey assignment and end-user facing applications.   The National Library of Sweden is planning a seminar in early February on the future of bibliographic control—a Swedish version of Dewey will certainly be part of the discussion. 

Indonesian Translation of the DDC

We’ve been quiet the last few weeks due to travel, vacation, review meetings for our new editorial support system, publication deadlines, and ongoing DDC development.  Juli Beall, Libbie Crawford, and I took a break on Wednesday evening to meet by teleconference with colleagues at the National Library of Indonesia to plan a new Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) translation of Abridged Edition 14.  The last Indonesian translation was published in 1979, and was based on Abridged Edition 10.  The 1979 translation has been reprinted numerous times (1982, 1989, 1991, 1993 and 2006), but a new translation is definitely long overdue.  We recently updated the developments for geographic areas, peoples, languages, and literatures of Indonesia—we expect to make additional adjustments to these developments plus other sections of the DDC as we work with the Indonesian translation team.

Dewey Translators Meeting at IFLA 2008

Forty-five librarians from fifteen countries attended the Dewey Translators Meeting at the World Library and Information Congress (74th IFLA General Conference and Council) in Québec City on August 12.  The Dewey Translators Meeting, hosted annually at IFLA conferences by OCLC since 2003, brings together representatives of Dewey translation teams and national libraries plus other interested Dewey users from around the world.  Since IFLA 2008 happened to be held just north of us in Québec City, nearly all Dewey editorial team members were able to participate in this year’s meeting.

We have just posted most of the presentations from the meeting.  Michael Panzer presented a slightly updated version of his ALA 2008 Annual Conference presentation on Multilingual MelvilClass—this time, he included a live demonstration of a Greasemonkey script that integrates German and English captions on the same screen.  Juli Beall discussed upcoming updates to groups of people and literary periods (we are currently soliciting comments on the changes to groups of people and the treatment of literary periods for authors writing under more than one name—comments on the latter were supposed to have closed by August 15, 2008, but we have extended the deadline until September 1, 2008).  Giles Martin updated attendees on the approved extensions to the representation of the DDC in MARC 21 formats.  Sally McCallum (Library of Congress) noted that the updates will be published in a month or so (we are still awaiting word on when the changes to the MARC 21 Bibliographic format will be implemented at OCLC).  [A side note: Nancy Williamson (Professor Emerita, University of Toronto) was also at the meeting—Professor Williamson was the consultant retained by LC to prepare a report on converting its classification scheme into machine-readable form; her study facilitated the development of the original MARC Classification format.]  Rebecca Green gave a quick overview of the DDC Training Program.  Ingebjørg Rype (National Library of Norway), Magdalena Svanberg (National Library of Sweden), and I gave a condensed version of the talk Ingebjørg and I presented the week before at the ISKO Conference on the pilot study we just concluded with nineteen Norwegian librarians to explore the usability of a mixed Norwegian-English version of the DDC as a classifier’s tool.  Patrice Landry (Swiss National Library) gave a brief update on the activities of the European DDC Users’ Group (EDUG) (EDUG working groups on archaeology, education, law, and technical issues met immediately following the meeting).  Diane Vizine-Goetz (OCLC Office of Research) wrapped up the meeting with a live demonstration of the latest version of Classify, a prototype service designed to support the assignment of classification numbers.

We've already recruited our first speaker for next year’s Dewey Translators Meeting at IFLA 2009 in Milan (the exact date of our meeting during the conference is yet to be determined).  Marie Baliková (Czech National Library) has agreed to discuss the top-level concordance she is developing between UDC and DDC to enable creation of an English-language topic map of the library’s collection (classed in UDC) using the DDC.

Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA Annual 2008

Several presentations from the Dewey Breakfast/Update at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference on June 28, 2008, are now up on the Dewey web site. My presentation on groups of people is a preview of the major changes to the treatment of groups of people across the DDC plus our proposed timetable for introduction of the changes. We've discussed these changes in many past entries, most recently in the report on EPC Meeting 129 last month. We expect to post the draft versions of Table 1 —08–09 and 305–306 for final user comment in early August. Juli Beall discussed literary periods—you'll be hearing more from her later this week on one aspect of her presentation, the treatment of literary periods for writers who write under more than one name. Michael Panzer discussed the two sides of Dewey—the language-neutral side and language-dependent side—as an introduction to a research project under way with Deutsche Nationalbibliothek to explore the possibilities of an integrated display of Dewey in several different languages using MelvilClass. 

Diane Vizine-Goetz also demonstrated the latest version of Classify, a prototype classification support service.  Diane posed a series of questions for consideration by the group:

• Include other classification schemes?
• Display unclassed counts/percentages in summary and chart?
• Treat Fic, B, and E as DDC numbers?
• For latest edition, include full and abridged in summary?
• What should be included in details section?
• Include links to other services, e.g., ClassWeb?
• Add feature for class number suggestions?

Please try out Classify and feel free to comment here or directly on the Classify feedback form.