Why organize information if you can find it? UDC and libraries in an Internet world

Abstract

The Belgians Otlet en La Fontaine created the Universal Decimal Classification in order to collect and organize the world's knowledge. This happened in an age when information was almost exclusively made available by libraries. Since the internet, the quantity of information outside libraries is enormous and keeps growing every day. The internet is accessible to anybody, it is fundamentally unorganized and its content changes constantly. Collecting and organizing the world's knowledge seem to have become an impossible ambition. Perhaps it is even unnecessary, since search engines make information retrievable now. And why would we organize information if we can find it? So what will be the role of UDC and libraries in this internet environment? Libraries can still play a role as a major information provider, if they adapt fully to the expectations of a modern end user. The design and the functionalities of online catalogues should allow maximal accessibility, usability and active participation of the end user in the internet environment. Metadata, like UDC, should maximize the visibility of information, enrich it and invite the end user to assign metadata himself.