UDC or DDC: a note about the suitable choice for the National Library of Liechtenstein

Abstract

The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is currently used in the National Library of Liechtenstein (NLL). Librarians have been using the 1978 German medium edition â Dezimalklassifikation: Internationale Mittlere Ausgabe: FID 550â published by the German Institute for Standardization (Deutsches Institut für Normung - DIN). Since DIN ceased its activity as UDC publisher, there has been no other interest in publishing a German edition of the classification. Hence, the NLL library lacks a suitable and up-to-date UDC edition in German to extend and modernize its content indexing. In order to update information access to its collection, the NLL is faced with two options: reclassifying books to the more recent edition of the UDC or reclassifying to DDC22(Dewey Decimal Classification), recently translated and published in German. In 2007-2008, as part of a graduate library & information science programme internship, research was conducted to assess the suitability of the two classification schemes in supporting collection management and information access in the NLL - with relation to costs, work expenditure and practical classification issues. This text is a brief summary from the final research report.