This week I went to this event put on jointly by the University College & Research group (UC&R) and the Cataloguing & Indexing group (C&I) at CILIP Headquarters.
Firstly, the food was fantastic. CILIP have really stepped things up: parma ham, mozzerella and tomato salad, lovely. Sadly this was the only tweet I sent from the event because my mobile's IE was being lame.
The first talk was 'DDC23 Standard on the horizon' by Caroline Kent from the British Library and Chair of the DDC Editorial Policy Committee. The CILIP DDC committee is a group of volunteers who reread the editors' new DDC schedules which are published every 7 years to reflect the significant changes in the world of knowledge. With the increasing use of WebDewey this work cycle may change, as it allows for more regular updates. There is debate as to how often WebDewey should be updated, to ensure that users get regular updates without disrupting their work (for example if you half catalogued an item and returned to it the following day to find the schedule changed!) Caroline suggested that beyond DDC23 the print edition may be viewed as being in support of WebDewey, although the printed schedule will always be important as WebDewey is expensive and not all libraries who use Dewey have consistent access to computers.
Caroline spoke about the international use of Dewey (Dewey is used in 130 countries, there are 20 official translations). Translations give the opportunity to enrich areas of the schedule, for example expanding areas of local history and geography although we would be unlikely to need them in the UK (unless we were working in a very specialised collection on, say, Swedish History). An area of discussion within the translations has been archaeology and ancient history (930 and 940), as it reflects the world known to the Romans, so it doesn't include for example Poland as the Romans never went to Poland. The translations aren't identical but they do match which allows a user to find their relevant section in an unfamilar collection or a foreign land. I experienced this myself when I was visiting libraries in Australia.
I have used Dewey for years in various workplaces and really enjoy the discussions around its use and how the schedule changes. Caroline spoke about how old knowledge is removed, for example how within Home and Family Management they have recently removed children's games that no longer exist. They are always careful to use generic terms rather than trademarks which can be difficult for example around computing. A hot debate in the production of DDC23 was around changes to Table 1 from 'Kinds Of Persons' to 'Groups of People', as sociologically speaking a group is seen as self selecting.
The second talk was by Alan Danskin, the British Library's Metadata and Bibliographic Standards Coordinator and the chair of the C&I group. His talk was on 'Changing standards: from AACR2 to RDA'. RDA (Resource Description and Access) is the successor to AACR2 as of June 2010. RDA was designed for the digital world, and as such handles a variety of media and offers a less cluttered display. It handles granularity well and maps to other schemes (Dublin Core, MARC21 etc).
It was a great evening and reminded me of one of my favourite library quotes: "Librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession." (Kephart 1890).
As always, it was great to meet with other professionals and network, although I had to verbally tender my resignation from the UC&R London chapter committee as I am relocating for my new job. When I am settled I hope to get involved with special interest groups, although CoFHE might be more appropriate than UC&R, we'll see who'll have me! In the meanwhile I will continue to follow UC&R's work and to keep in touch with the colleagues I have met through it.
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