Hi,

International UDC Seminar 2009 entitled "Classification at a Crossroads:
multiple directions to usability" took place in The Hague on 29-30
October 2009.

This conference was very successful in bringing together speakers and
audience from different communities interested in and working with
classification schemes. There were 135 delegates in attendance from 32
countries and from various kinds of information services and
institutions, libraries, museums, academia and research institutes. The
focus of the conference was on technical and technological issues on how
to make classification work in a networked environment.

Talks provoked interesting discussions and interactions and left us all
with the feeling that we need more events of this kind which would give
opportunities to technical, software and standards specialists to
interact with classificationists, classification owners and
practitioners. The panel discussion at the end of the conference
stressed again how the application environment for classification has
changed significantly for both those who publish and distribute
classification and for those who apply it. The commitment to open
sharing and linking of data is a shared responsibility. It transpires
that many issues that deal with the classification use are not entirely
to do with funding or programming expertise as much as a matter of
'know how' and there is a great responsibility on gatekeepers of this
knowledge and expertise to share it and make it accessible.

We have now published talk slides and mp3 recordings (only one session
at the end of the first day was not recorded for technical reasons) and
we hope that colleagues interested in this area may find some of the
talks inspiring:

http://www.udcc.org/seminar2009/programme.htm

We will make an announcement when conference papers are published.

Kind regards

Aida Slavic