| Universal Decimal Classification |
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Information AboutUniversal Decimal Classification |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT UNIVERSAL DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION | |
| library cataloging and classification | |
| knowledge representation | |
| classification systems | |
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The documents classified by UDC may be in any form. They will often be Literature , i.e. written documents, but may also be in other media such as Film s, Video and Sound recordings, Illustration s, Map s, and Realia such as Museum pieces. UDC classifications use Hindu-Arabic Numeral s and are based on the Decimal System . Every number is thought of as a decimal fraction with the initial decimal point omitted, which determines filing order. For ease of reading, a UDC identifier is usually punctuated after every third digit. Thus, after 61 " Medical sciences" come the subdivisions 611 to 619; under 611 " Anatomy " come its subdivisions 611.1 to 611.9; under 611.1 come all of its subdivisions before 611.2 occurs, and so on; after 619 comes 62. An advantage of this system is that it is infinitely extensible, and when new subdivisions are introduced, they need not disturb the existing allocation of numbers. The main categories:
A document may be classified under a combination of different categories through the use of additional symbols. For example: The design of UDC lends itself to machine readability, and the system has been used both with early automatic mechanical sorting devices, and modern library OPAC s, where its relational notation scheme allows for somewhat more sophisticated queries when compared to other classifications. A core version of UDC, with 65,000 subdivisions, is now available in Database format, and is called the Master Reference File (MRF). The current full version of the UDC has 220,000 subdivisions. SEE ALSO
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