Analysis of Synthesized DDC Numbers

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) has been in use for more than 100 years in libraries in more than 138 countries around the world. In addition to the classes listed in the schedules, the DDC system allows to build so called synthesized numbers based on sophisticated rules. The way back is not straigthforward and it cannot easily be seen which DDC classes are contained in a synthesized DDC number. The automatic analysis of DDC numbers is carried out at the VZG as part of the project Colibri/DDC by Ulrike Reiner, PhD. We are happy to share the first publicly available version of an API and web interface to look up and show the most detailed anaylsis of synthesized DDC numbers. As of today, the database contains 11,360 analyzed DDC numbers from the main classes 100 and 700. More information and a short screencast can be found on the coli-ana project page.