Thirty years of Dewey in Italy: the role of the National central library of Florence and the latest developments in terms of interoperability with other indexing tools

Abstract

The aim of this article is to provide a historical overview of the Dewey Decimal Classification with particular regard to the BNCF role, starting from the first Italian translation in 1897 and continuing with the design and development of the Dewey notation's archive in the National library service's (SBN) OPAC, and with the adoption of the DDC for the Italian national bibliography (BNI). Since 2014 the BNCF has been involved in the Italian translation of the WebDewey, and is now working on its interoperability with the Nuovo soggettario Thesaurus, with particular regard to the semantic and technical criteria for the creation of concordances between equivalents concepts. These criteria are in compliance with ISO 25964 and with the recommendations of the European DDC users group (EDUG).