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Notes & Queries
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Topics
More about the meaning of common auxiliaries
In this section last year (1), I considered the meanings
that common auxiliaries can acquire from context1, and remarked that 'in
UDC an auxiliary qualifies the number that it is juxtaposed with'. In
the course of the Revision Group's work in cancelling and relocating parts
of classes 06 and 65 that are rendered redundant by the new management
table at 005, an example occurred that illustrates the point even more
emphatically, showing that the same auxiliary table can acquire contextual
meaning from different parts of a single built number. A place
was needed for temporary exhibitions (now at 069.9), and examples were
agreed on:
069.9(100) World fairs, expositions (expos)
069.9(100)"1851"(410.111) The Great Exhibition (London, 1851).
The second of these contains two place auxiliaries, and their meaning
is different: the first expresses the scope or inclusiveness of the exhibition
(world-wide), while the second expresses the location (London). And the
order is logical; (100) qualifies the subject of the main number, and
is juxtaposed with it. The other elements follow in conventional sequence
- time and place, in the reverse of filing order. If there were an inflexible
rule for citation order, it would separate similar entities:
069.9(100) World fairs in general
069.9"1851"(100)(410.111) An 1851 world fair in London -
first a sequence divided by place, then a sequence divided (primarily)
by time. Unhelpful!
1 The meaning of common auxiliaries. In: Notes & Queries. Extensions and Corrections to the UDC, 23, November 2001, page 10.
Persons and roles
A query on how to classify the concept 'child pornography' has drawn attention to a gap in the expression of roles in the common auxiliaries of persons (Table 1k-05). Certainly the concept, and term, are likely to be sought, and so notation has been agreed on - 343.542.1-053.2. This should be adequate, though it is unspecific as to role, meaning simply 'pornography in connection with children'. There are two role indicators available in -05… :
-051 Persons as agents, doers, practitioners (studying, making, serving
etc.)
616-051 Medical staff: doctors, nurses etc.
929-051 Biographers
-052 Persons as targets, clients, users (studied, served etc.)
616-052 Medical patients
929-052 Biographees
The impression given is that the terms listed (e.g. 'targets, clients, users') are strings of synonyms, though synonymy is never an exact match. Roughly, -051 = active; -052 = passive. If these indicators were added to the number cited above, we would have
343.542.1-053.2-051 Pornography - children - active (As creators? As
organizers?)
343.542.1-053.2-052 Pornography - children - passive (As targets? As recipients
or consumers?)
both of which seem absurdly inept. There is no way in -05… of indicating persons as subjects, and only an unsatisfactory way of indicating victims, by equating them with targets - but targeting could be beneficial. Clearly, roles in human activities are more various and more subtle than is allowed for in UDC. There is no vacant 3-digit notation available, but it might be useful to subdivide -051/-052; for instance, active roles [-051] include makers or creators as well as organizers or facilitators, while passive roles [-052] include beneficiaries, victims and consumers. The matter is complicated by the fact that the nature of the role is already implied in some subjects, e.g. the recipient of cash benefits can only be a beneficiary, while the recipient of assault or murder can only be a victim, so to specify the role by still more detail would be a tautology. Yet there are cases, as we have seen, where ambiguity can occur.
Persons and animals
Among the many human attributes listed in the -05 auxiliaries (Table 1k) are a few which are equally applicable to non-human animals, the obvious ones being:
-053.1 … Born, unborn, living or dead (embryos etc.)
-053.2 Young…
-053.8 Adult…
-055.1 Male…
-055.2 Female…
-055.5/.7 …Kinship relation [sire, dam etc.]
In classes 59 and 63 in the MRF, the concepts 'male animals' and 'female animals' do not occur at all, though related concepts do, and are denoted either enumeratively, as at 591.35 'Young animals', or by special auxiliaries, such as the subdivisions of 636.082.31 'Structure of herds and flocks'. However, the old 'full edition' of 636 does include a single instance of the -05 auxiliaries:
636.06 Characteristics, constitution and special biological features
of domestic animals
(Example) 636.06-053 Domestic animals according to age etc.
There seems to be no reason why the relevant numbers from Table 1k should not be used for animal characteristics, while the irrelevant ones would of course be ignored. There cannot be a simple substitution for the existing notation, because it would alter the filing order and disrupt the structure of the classes, but the option could be kept in mind for future revisions. A simple addition to the scope note at -05 would suffice: 'Where relevant, the subdivisions of -05 may also be applied to non-human animals'.
Past civilizations and cultures
A user asked how to denote the history of the Incas in UDC. At the time, the term did not occur in the MRF except as an example under the rather emotive heading 'Primitive art' at 7.031.2, but the common auxiliaries of race, ethnic grouping and nationality (Table 1f) allow you to derive numbers from the language auxiliaries (Table 1c) for linguistic-cultural groupings. However, you can only do this if you know what was the language of the people concerned. The two best-known pre-Columbian American nations, the Aztecs and the Incas, are contrasted in this respect: the language of the Aztecs is actually called Aztec (though the native name Nahuatl also appears), and can easily be traced. Inca, however, has never been the name of a language, and you need to know that the language of the Incas was Quechua; then you can trace the language auxiliary =873.122 and hence the ethnic auxiliary (=873.122). It seemed worthwhile to add the two examples, Aztecs and Incas, under 94.
Another problem arises from this. The common auxiliaries of place (Table 1e) include a number for pre-Columbian America, (399.7), but no further subdivision is given, so specification of particular civilizations can only be done by ethnic auxiliaries. This raises the possibility of cross-classification. It would be a very careless classifier who used (399.7) for pre-Columbian peoples in general and (=8...) for various specific pre-Columbian peoples. But it would be an easier mistake to make, to class some cultures, e.g. ancient Greek and Roman, in (3...) and others, especially non-European, in (=1/=8). To some extent, UDC invites this, and it shows its Eurocentric origins in (3...), which is based mainly on places known to Graeco-Roman antiquity, with a few other places offered as an afterthought. The resultant mixture would be very unhelpful:
94(3) History of ancient cultures
94(37) History of ancient Rome
94(38) History of ancient Greece
...
94(4/9) History of all the countries of the modern world
...
94(=...) History of other ancient cultures
94(=822.1) History of the Aztecs
94(=873.122) History of the Incas
The separation of similar entities is bad enough in history alone, but is worse when searching only on the auxiliary, seeking material on all subjects related to a given culture (pre-Columbian science, arts, folklore etc.). There are three ways to avoid this:
[1] Choose either place or ethnic auxiliaries for all pre-modern cultures - never mix them in a given system; however, this involves a loss of precision, since some detailed concepts occur only in one or other of the tables.
[2] Avoid (3...) altogether. Derive all auxiliaries for pre-modern cultures
from the language auxiliaries, e.g.
=124'02 Classical Latin; hence (=124'02) Ancient Romans
=14'02 Classical Greek; hence (=14'02) Ancient Greeks
[3] Never use ethnic auxiliaries on their own for pre-modern cultures
- cite them after (3...), so that the general immediately precedes the
particular:
94(399.7) History of pre-Columbian cultures
94(399.7=822.1) History of the Aztecs
The last option seems to be the best; but all of these possibilities are available within the rules of UDC, which does lend a little weight to the criticism sometimes made, that UDC allows too many options.
Relocation of Medicine - your views are sought
The draft restructuring of Medicine (class 61) continues in E&C, and the question has arisen in the Revision Group as to whether it should remain in its present location when the proposal is finalized. The long-standing gap at class 4 in UDC is an obvious candidate as host location, solving several problems at once: providing space for the redeveloped medical classification, leaving class 6 purely for technology, and filling that annoying hole in UDC, which has been there for nearly four decades.
The views of users and editors on the pros and cons of relocation would
be welcome. Please email the Editor in Chief at:
i.mcilwaine@ucl.ac.uk .
UDC - user figures
The problemWe are sometimes asked for figures of the total use of UDC.
There are no authoritative up-to-date figures for worldwide use of UDC, because it is published in many different languages by different organizations, so even the sales figures are scattered.
The world
The most recent research currently known to us (as at June 2002) is from
Estonia, by Sirje Nilbe, dated 1997 and entitled The worldwide use of
the Universal Decimal Classification. A summary can be seen at
http://www.utlib.ee/ee/Publikatsioonid/1997/ryt/sirje_resume.html.
Its conclusion at that time was:
UDC has 100 000 institutional and individual users in 60 countries…
The tables at abridged, medium or full level are published in 25 languages.
The UK
The last census of users in the UK was done in 1980, so the figures are
very dated, but it was an active survey (not a postal questionnaire) so
they are exhaustive. There were 640 users in the UK at that time, making
up 22% of libraries and information agencies in the country.
Around 2500 copies of the standard English version BS 1000M have been
sold since 1993, though that includes sales abroad, and the picture is
complex, as a large organization may buy more than one copy.
Should the asterisk * be abolished?
The asterisk * is used in UDC as an indicator of non-UDC notation, but is commonly used in computer searches as a wild card. This dual role could cause confusion, and the asterisk is not really essential in UDC notation; so should it be abolished? Where alpha characters occur in a class mark, they are themselves a facet indicator, and no other symbol is needed. For example,
66–97*C100 100° Celsius (boiling point of water)could easily become:
66–97C100 100° Celsius...
Where alpha characters do not occur, a symbol is needed to replace the asterisk, and there is an obvious candidate — the hash #. It is already commonly used (especially in north American usage) to mean ‘number’, and would be easily and intuitively understood, e.g. as the atomic number of an element:
546.791.027*238 Uranium 238could become:
546.791.027#238 Uranium 238
A biterminal symbol for non-UDC notation
There is no reason why non-UDC notation should not occur in the middle of a built number. If it consists of alpha characters, its status is self-evident, e.g.
16WIT:81 Work on logic by Wittgenstein, in relation to linguistics.
But if the introduced notation is numerical, how can one tell where the non-UDC part ends and the UDC part resumes? For example, in
66–97C100–936.35 Reactions between liquids at 100° Celsius,how much of the class mark is UDC? It might be better to enclose the introduced notation between biterminal signs. As quotation marks “...” and parentheses (...) are reserved for different meanings, the possibilities are square brackets [...], already used as a grouping device, pointed brackets <...> and brace brackets {...}. For example,
See D, Strachan response66–97[C100]–936.35 Reactions between liquids at 100° Celsius.
Place and institution are not coextensive
The current schedule for education in the MRF contains this entry:
implying that the place auxiliary for a county or a town will serve to specify a particular university. This is misleading. Firstly, one town may contain more than one university. Oxford (410.117) has three: the University of Oxford, Oxford Brookes University and Westminster College Oxford (with university status). Secondly, a university may not be limited to one place even if it is named after it. The University of London has colleges at Egham, Surrey (Royal Holloway), Wye, Kent (Wye College) and elsewhere. The place and the institution are not coextensive. Alphabetic extension is needed to specify an institution, even if the place auxiliary is also used:
378.4 Universities
Class here traditional universities with all or most of the usual faculties
378.4(410)OU The Open University
378.4(410.117) University of Oxford
378.4(410.126) University of Sussex
378.4(443.611) Université de Paris à la Sorbonne
378.4(410.117)OXF University of Oxford.
The place auxiliary could be kept at a more general level if preferred, e.g. a country:
378.4(410)OXF Universities in the UK — University of Oxford.
The alphabetic extension is outside the parentheses as is not part of the place facet.
For a map showing all recognised Universities, University Colleges and Higher Education Colleges in the United Kingdom, see
http://scitsc.wlv.ac.uk/ukinfo/uk.map.html
Future of class 65
The present content of class 65 is an odd mixture, particularly as management is split between 65/651 and 658, with unrelated material in between. Some aspects of management are also classed under 06. As management, like computer science, is all-pervasive (any activity may be managed), should management be entirely relocated in class 0? Of the remaining parts of 65, accounting, publicity and PR are also partly covered under 06 and could be developed there. Telecommunication, postal and transport services could move to 339. Printing could be more logically placed with printing technology at 681.6.
Should the slash / be abolished?
The oblique stroke (or forward slash) / is merely a device for saving space. Is it still needed? It replaces a series of pluses +, thereby making a class mark shorter at the cost of obscuring information. Even the official note on its use (Table 1a, Section 2 ‘Consecutive extension’) advises against it, recommending separate class entries instead, i.e. not:
546.32/.35 The more important alkali metalsbut:
546.32 Potassium
546.33 Sodium
546.34 Lithium
546.35 Rubidium
In information retrieval systems, this is vital, as items classed at the invisible numbers in the middle of a range would be missed; class marks with the oblique stroke are adequate only for linear sequences such as shelf order. And there is an overlap of function: where the component numbers in a range are non-consecutive, the plus is obligatory, but when they are consecutive, the stroke may be used. Thus, when there are only two consecutive numbers, the meaning of the two signs is identical: (7/8) ‘The Americas’ means the same as (7+8). When there are more than two numbers in the range, the extra length caused by using pluses is unimportant in the era of computer files, copying, cutting and pasting.
Punctuation and intercalation
Intercalation of auxiliary notation in main numbers is a well-established UDC technique. Some sources illustrate it while omitting some of the punctuation, e.g. in the old Abridged English Edition (BS 1000A), last updated in 1963, is the example (page 9):
338(42)5 Prices in Englandwhere the number is built up from 338... ‘Economic situation’, (42) ‘England’ and .5 ‘Prices’, but the point before the 5 has been omitted. This is possibly because the intercalated auxiliary is regarded as punctuation enough, but this is misleading. When a punctuation mark is omitted, how can you tell what kind of punctuation it would have been? The number might be interpreted as a colon combination, 338(42):5 ‘Economic situation in England, in relation to the sciences’. More recent English editions avoid this ambiguity, as does Prof. McIlwaine's Guide to the use of UDC (FID 703, 1993), which gives the example (page 34):
622(410).33 ‘Mining — Great Britain — coal,
not 622(410)33, which might mean ‘Mining in Britain in relation to economics’.
(3) versus (4/9) — is the distinction needed?
It is well known that the distinction in the place auxiliaries (Table 1e) between the ‘ancient’ world (i.e. Graeco-Roman) and the ‘mediaeval-to-modern’ one (i.e. since the end of the western Roman empire, late 5th century AD) is Eurocentric and quite meaningless for many ancient nations such as India and China, and of course the civilizations of pre-Columbian America. Some UDC editions offer the user the option of ignoring (3) and using the appropriate divisions of (4/9) instead, and dealing analogously with the history and geography sections when these were divided enumeratively — before the analytical principle was restored in EC 19 (1997). But another question arises: do the (3) auxiliaries even serve their Eurocentric purpose satisfactorily? The current schedule for history allows for peoples not confined to one geographical area, using the auxiliaries of race and ethnic grouping (Table 1f), for example,
94(=214.58) History of the Romany peoples...
Many of the peoples mentioned under (3) were similarly mobile, e.g. the Germanic tribes at the subdivisions of (363) and at (368). Should the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Nordic peoples be thought of as inhabiting continental Europe or parts of the British Isles? If the former, which part of Europe? Normans were Scandinavians who migrated to northern France, and from there some of them colonized England; where does one class a complete history of the Normans? In fact, the very concept ‘the ancient world’, like the auxiliaries that express it, offends against logic by confusing two incompatible principles of division — it is partly spatial, partly chronological. Cultures not limited in time or space would be better denoted by ethnic subdivisions. For the history of a given area, the place and time facets should be clearly distinguished.
East African states
A user of the Pocket Edition of UDC (PD 1000) asked why there was a place auxiliary for West African states, (66), but none for East African states. There is a mixture of reasons. In the MRF, there was an anomaly in the notation as well as some historical factors that influenced the selection. There used to be a number for East African states, (676), but it was a 3-digit number, unlike (66), and of course it appeared to be a subdivision of (67) 'Equatorial and central African states and territories' - not a very logical arrangement. Moreover, (676) was used as the generic placing for British East Africa, an ambiguous and now obsolete name for the former British colonies of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, but also sometimes used to mean Kenya alone. That entry has now vanished from the MRF, though I cannot at the moment trace when it was cancelled. It is not much needed, as Table 1e includes special auxiliary notations for the concepts 'East' (1-11), 'Colonies' (1-52) and 'Historical status' (1-89), so any of the individual countries involved could be indexed in great detail; and the generic grouping 'East African states' can be classed either at (6-11), or - if that is too distant from the individual states - at (67-11), which would imply the eastern part of the group of states listed under (67). There is no free 2-digit number that could be assigned to the east African countries, but the description at (67) should perhaps be enlarged to reflect its true content: 'Equatorial, central and eastern African states and territories'.
More about the slash /
The above item brings to mind an oddity in UDC: though I said that UDC numbers can be truncated from the right, NOT the left, there is one exception, and that is the second element in a range number, i.e. the one following the slash. If it is more than 3 digits long, it can be abbreviated by omitting digits (in groups of three) that it has in common with the first element, resulting in a point (or other sign) as the first thing after the slash. The example in the MRF (Table 1a, Section 2),
546.32/.35 Heavier-than-air craft. Aeroplanes
conceals not only the numbers in the middle, 546.33 and 546.34, but also maims the final number, 546.35 - another reason for disliking it. It is fair to add, however, that Dr Riesthuis has shown (in his article 'Searching with words' [E&C 21, November 1999]) that an algorithm for deconstructing range numbers can be devised - but it is 'rather complex'. He also mentions that range numbers are of two sorts, 'those that are listed in the tables and those that are formed by the classifiers', and adds:
'It is necessary to look up each contraction to determine whether it is listed in the tables before splitting it up.' He gives an example of a range number that would not be correctly deconstructed, observes that 'It is almost always possible to express the same concept by simpler notation',
and concludes that
'Classifiers should be economical in their use of range numbers formed with the slash'.
This is a convincing argument; but it would be interesting to know whether UDC users out there make much use of the slash in user-built numbers.
Why German libraries will never use UDC?
This is an unofficial explanation by German libraries, as to why the UDC will never be used by them. In course of time, the Austrian and Swiss libraries will also prefer to use the DDC. The source of the information was some librarians whom I met at a meeting in Germany.
Arguments against UDC according to the German libraries:
1) It took the German libraries several months and repeated tries to get any answer from the UDC Consortium.
2) No regular updates of the notation are available. Therefore, some libraries (e.g. ETH-Zürich) had to draw up their own updates. That damages consistency between different institutions.
3) There is no consistency in terms of time. Previous UDC versions and updates are not comparable, and (to take a fictitious example) a notation that once represented 'inorganic chemistry' might, twenty years later, represent 'life sciences'. This inconsistency over time is unacceptable for librarians (who count in centuries). Maybe this method is acceptable for a documentalist, but not for a librarian. This criticism has also been made by some UDC users in the past.
4) Licences are too expensive.
5) The data format is not clear and transparent to librarians. Sorry
for that bad news. But just take a look at the DDC website and their transparent
and easy software tool:
http://132.174.1.5/oclc/fp/
UDC is not yet dead, but if major changes do not take place, it will definitely be dead in the long run. In Austria, we still are in favour of the UDC, but if the above-mentioned problems are not remedied within the next few years, we may have to change our mind.
Libraries are some of the most influential agents in the information industry. Their decisions have a spill-over effect on other institutions and on the industry (publishers, software companies). In that particular field, UDC has lost the battle. I would be pleased if you could respond briefly to those five arguments.
Gerhard K. Wagner,
Secretary General Verband für Informationswirtschaft in Österreich - VIW
(Federation for the Information Industry in Austria) gkwagner@via.at
http://www.viw.or.at/
Inner and outer form: a note on citation order
Form characteristics of a document are of two kinds: inner form, where the form influences the subject (e.g. historical presentation) and outer form, which expresses only the physical characteristics of the information carrier (e.g. a sound recording).
In UDC, Table 1d (the Common auxiliaries of form) does not distinguish between the two kinds, and they are intermingled in the table. This means that when several form auxiliaries are cited, ascending numerical order may not be appropriate; inner form should occur next to the subject before outer form is expressed,
e.g.
[792+82-2](091)(086.7)
A spoken-word history of the theatre
(subject - historical form - sound recording)
A note to this effect should be added at the beginning of Table 1d.
I.C. McIlwaine
Editor in Chief
i.mcilwaine@ucl.ac.uk
Truncation of dates - and what does the date refer to?
A user has inquired how calendar dates are truncated in UDC ('Would the current century be "20" or "00"?'). The answer is that calendar dates, though quoted directly from an external source, behave in this respect like all UDC numbers: they can be progressively truncated from the right - thus denoting more and more general concepts - but NOT from the left. So "2000" is a single year; "200" is a decade (= "2000/2009"); "20" is a century (= "2000/2099"); and "2" is a milennium (= "2000/2999"). "00" would mean the first century AD (= "0001/0099"). Incidentally, if one pedantically observes the Gregorian calendar, which does not recognise a year 0, the Christian era begins with AD 1, i.e. "0001", and all centuries begin with a number ending in 1. So the 21st century, strictly speaking, is "2001/2100"; but this is a fine distinction that is not needed for most purposes. "20" is more economical.
The same inquirer asks about the exact significance of a time auxiliary in classifying literature: 'Does the time indication pertain to the century in which the author was born, or to the century in which his/her works were published?' The answer is that any auxiliary qualifies the number to which it is attached, so if literature is the subject being classed, the time auxiliary indicates the date of origin of the literature. Very often, the date of first publication follows soon after completion of composition, but not invariably: a previously unpublished work may receive its first publication centuries after it was written. Where there is any significant time difference, the date of composition is more helpful, especially since the publication date is in any case likely to be given elsewhere in a catalogue or list (among the bibliographic details). However, if a biography of the writer is being considered, then the time auxiliary indicates the dates of his/her life. Thus:
821.112.5-1"19" 20th century Dutch poetry
(according to when it was written)
but
929:821.112.5-1"19" Lives of 20th century Dutch-speaking poets
(according to when they lived).
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