Potential of bibliographic tools to organize knowledge on the Internet: The use of Dewey Decimal Classification scheme for organizing Web-based information resources

Possibilities are being explored to use traditional bibliographic tools, li ke Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), Library of Congress Classification ( LCC), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Universal Decimal Cl assification (UDC, to improve the organization of information resources on the Internet. The most recent edition of DDC,with its enhanced features, ha s greater potential than other traditional approaches. A review of selected Web sites that use DDC to organize Web resources indicates, however, that the full potential of the DDC scheme for this purpose has not been realized . While the review found that the DDC classification structure was more eff ective when compared with other knowledge organization systems, we conclude that DDC needs to be further enhanced to make it more suitable for this ap plication. As widely reported in the professional literature, OCLC has cond ucted research on the potential of DDC for organizing Web resources. Such r esearch, however, is experimental and should be supplemented by empirical s tudies with user participation.