Automatic Analysis of Dewey Decimal Classification Notations

An interesting work on automatic decomposition of Dewey numbers has been done by Ulrike Reiner. This is a continuation of the research previously undertaken by S. Liu (1996): Decomposing DDC synthesized numbers".
Ulrike presented reported on this research at the The 31st Annual Conference of the German Classification Society on Data Analysis, Machine Learning, and Applications in Freiburg, on 8th March 2007.

We hope to see the printed version of the paper titled "Automatic Analysis of Dewey Decimal Classification Notations" in the conference proceedings, as well.

An excerpt from the abstract:

"The complex DDC system (Ed. 22) allows to synthesize (to build) a huge amount of DDC notations (numbers) with the aid of instructions. Since the meaning of built DDC numbers is not obvious - especially to non-DDC experts - a computer program has been written that automatically analyzes DDC numbers. Based on Songqiao Liu’s dissertation (Liu (1997)), our program decomposes DDC notations from the main class 700 (as one of the ten main classes). In addition, our program analyzes notations from all ten classes and determines the meaning of every semantic atom contained in a built DDC notation. The extracted DDC atoms can be used for information retrieval, automatic classification, or other purposes."

Similar work on decomposition of Universal Decimal Classification numbers was reported by Gerhard Riesthuis at the International ISKO conference in 1998.:

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1997) "Decomposition of complex UDC notation", Knowledge organization for information retrieval : proceedings of the Sixth International Study Conference on Classification Research, London, 16-18 June 1997. The Hague : FID, 1997. (FID 716), 139-143.

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1998) "Decomposition of UDC-numbers and the text of the UDC Master Reference File", Structures and relations in knowledge organization : proceedings of the Fifth International ISKO Conference, Lille, 25-29 August 1998. Edited by W. Mustafa Elhadi, J. Maniez, S. Pollitt. Würzburg : Ergon Verlag, 1998. (Advances in knowledge organization 6), 221-228.

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1998b) Zoeken met woorden. [doctoral thesis]. Amsterdam : Leerstoelgroep Boek-, Archief- en Informatiewetenschap, 1998. (BBI-reeks nr 6).

RIESTHUIS, G. J. A. (1999) "Searching with words : re-use of subject indexing", Extensions & Corrections to the UDC, 21 1999, 24-32.