Down here at the Manor, there are three little letters that are uppermost in our minds these days. Talkin' 'bout E. And S. And another S. Collectively, they signify ESS: Extremely Simple Syndication. No, wait, that's not right. Extra-Sensory Something-or-other? Hang on ... Don't we mean ESS, the legendary, much-sampled, art-funk pioneers who emerged from the late '70s NYC No Wave scene with a dynamic collision of twisted dance rhythms and a minimalist punk aesthetic? Uh, maybe we're getting a bit mixed up here. It's really our Editorial Support System that we're excited about, which is the software that we use to produce and maintain the DDC. The present version of the ESS was developed by OCLC in 1997 to support editorial work on Edition 22 (2003) and Abridged Edition 14 (2004), and was based on a relational database model using Microsoft SQL. This ESS was a replacement for a flat-file database system developed by Inforonics for the production of Edition 21 (1996) and Abridged Edition 13 (1997), which was itself an updated version of a system originally introduced in the late 1980s for the production of Edition 20 (1989) and Abridged Edition 12 (1990). It's now time to replace the ESS again: the new system will need to provide full and integrated support for the editorial revision of the DDC, mappings of DDC numbers to other vocabularies, the translation of the DDC into other languages, and the publication and distribution of the DDC both in print and via a variety of web-based services in a variety of formats. A team of developers at OCLC has begun work on the new system, and rapid progress is already being made. More news as we get it!
Love the ESG reference.
Posted by: Joe | 09 February 2006 at 08:11 PM