OCLC hosted the 5th Annual Dewey Translators Meeting on 21 August 2007 in conjunction with the World Library and Information Congress (73rd IFLA General Conference and Council) in Durban, South Africa. The theme of the meeting (chosen by attendees at the 2006 meeting) was “How can we all work together?” Thirty-one librarians, representing DDC projects in fifteen countries, participated in the meeting. Gordon Dunsire (University of Strathclyde) reported on recent work on the High-Level Thesaurus (HILT) project. In the HILT project, Dewey is used as a "semantic translator" for mappings from different Anglophone terminologies. Dewey has also been used to classify the collections included in the project. In this second role, Dewey facilitates the process of “subject landscaping” by pointing to the best collection(s) in which to search for items in a specific area of interest. Gordon also announced the launch of the web site of the Technical Issues Working Group of the European DDC Users Group (EDUG).
Juli Beall presented an update on our work with colleagues at Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), OCLC, and LC on extensions to the representation of the DDC in MARC 21 formats. Pia Leth (Royal Library of Sweden), Ingebjørg Rype (National Library of Norway), and I discussed our preliminary work on mixed DDC translations combining vernacular and English-language content. Michelle Rago (Library of Congress) talked about the use of the DDC in the World Digital Library project and showed a short conceptual video about WDL.
In the open reporting session, Patrice Landry (National Library of Switzerland) discussed the June 2007 EDUG meeting and organizational plans for the group. Patrice also noted that the EDUG 340 Law Working Group, chaired by Yvonne Jahns (DNB), had taken advantage of the presence of several members in Durban and held its first meeting on 20 August. The working group is focused on improvements to the representation of legal systems based on civil law. Representatives of the Arabic, French, Italian, and Vietnamese teams also reported on their respective translations. Dr. Sohair Wastawy (Bibliotheca Alexandrina) reported that the software for supporting the Arabic translation is 80% functional (diacritics remain a challenge), and organization of the translation work is under way. She mentioned the challenges of accommodating the breadth of Arabic terminology—for example, there are sixty words for “lion” in Arabic! Louis Cabral (ASTED) announced the anticipated publication of the French print edition in late September 2007, and discussed briefly the formation of a scientific advisory committee for the web version. Federica Paradisi (Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze) reported that the Italian translation of DDC 22 is expected to be published in early 2008. She also described the collaboration between the Italian team and the Dewey editors on the expansion of canon law, plus improvements to ancient and modern Italian history and geographic developments. Nguyen Thi Bac (General Sciences Library of Ho Chi Minh City) reported on DDC training efforts in Vietnam since the publication of the Vietnamese translation of Abridged Edition 14 last year, and plans for a translation of DDC 22.
Dr. Maria Inês Cordeiro (National Library of Portugal and editor in chief of the Universal Decimal Classification) presented a brief update on recent UDC translations and the restructuring of UDC's advisory board. Work is under way on a new editorial support system and improved data representation scheme for UDC (Juli and I met with Inês privately later in the week to discuss our shared interests in data management and representation of knowledge organization systems).
The attendees decided to revisit the “How can we all work together?” theme at next year’s meeting in Quebec City. Topics suggested included workflows for translations, the role of EPC, and a review of the first year of EDUG activities. There was also some interest expressed in a separate Dewey Developers Meeting.
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