Abstract
MANY classifications have been evolved rather as an intellectual exercise than with any specific aim in view. Others have been made in the attempt to devise a so-called logical system. Most have lapsed already into obscurity. The success of the Decimal Classification, which has survived sixty years of test and is still being adopted at an increasing rate, is a testimony to the qualities inherent in its structure and order. No alternative has been found to be sufficiently valuable to justify detailed development to the extent which the Dewey Classification has experienced, and no classification which lacks such detailed expansion is capable of replacing the Universal Decimal Classification. This classification was adopted unanimously as the international standard classification by representatives of more than forty Governments at the World Congress of Universal Documentation held in Paris in 1937. The Classification is employed in thousands of institutions throughout the world for the indexing and arrangement of public and private archives, books, references to published articles in literature and documents and apparatus of all kinds. Some 150,000 published references to literature in the field of science and technology alone are classified annually in accordance with this code, besides many hundreds of thousands of items in private files. The total work will comprise about 2,000 pages of printing in double column, including about 70,000 classes, and costing about £6. The appearance of “Section 54, Chemistry” (London: Messrs. Simpkin and Marshall, 1939. 7s. 6d.) will be welcomed by all those concerned with the progress of bibliography. The new Section comprises pure and theoretical chemistry. The industrial processes for the manufacture of chemicals will appear as Section 66. The present section contains about 4,000 main clauses, capable of dealing, in the minutest detail, with every aspect of modern chemistry; as an example of its application may be mentioned the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, which utilizes the classification to index annually some 120,000 items, mainly of chemical interest.
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The Universal Decimal Classification. Nature 144, 147 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144147b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144147b0