WebDewey search

Abstract

Libraries invest a lot of human and financial resources to index publications in their catalogues and to develop semantic indexing systems. It is becoming very important that libraries exploit these efforts to advantage their users. Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) contains a good deal of information that libraries could use to improve users’ search results. National libraries of Germany, Norway and Sweden created tools, based on the same base software, to search all data included in translation database that they use to publish WebDewey: WebDewey Search Deutsch, Norsk WebDewey Search and Svenska WebDewey Search. These tools allow end-users to browse DDC hierarchy, to find numbers using relative index and to search the whole database using a Google-like approach. Retrieved numbers can be used as links to search directly OPACs of the three libraries and, in German case, also some other relevant OPACs. Italian DDC data could be easily exploited in the same way to offer a useful tool also for Italian users, but AIB, publisher of Italian WebDewey, has to solve some issues about how to finance the project and about which OPACs to link from Italian WebDewey search.