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Federica ParadisiItalian National Bibliography

Classification and Indexing DivisionNational Central Library of Florence (Italy)

Linking DDC numbers to the new ‘Soggettario Italiano’

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The Prototype of the new Soggettario

October 2004: initial stage Work on the controlled vocabulary and

on the creation of the Thesaurus Completion expected by October 2006 Adoption of the open source software

produced by the FAO for the development and maintenance of its AGROVOC Thesaurus: versatility and ability for creating term equivalents in different languages

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The method choicesThe method choices

Compliance with the ISO 2788 standard, also taking in account the more recent proposals such as the British standard 8723 draft and the ANSI/NISO Z39.19 (2005)

Adoption of facet analysis method

Clear distinction between semantic and syntactic relationships

Abandon the “main heading/subdivision” approach and adoption a thesaurus of equally important terms, usable in any syntactic combination within subject strings

Use of syntactic role analysis in building subject strings

Adoption of an indexing system orientated to producing specific coextensive strings and defining rules for citation order.

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The system’s architecture the rules governing vocabulary and syntax in

compliance with the international standards a body of instructions, consisting of syntactic

notes connected to some categories of terms a monolingual and multidisciplinary

Thesaurus, comprising about 13.000 terms the subject strings file

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Categorization of terms

Categories FacetsAgents 

Organisms Organizations

Persons and Groups of persons  Actions Activities

Disciplines

Processes 

Things Forms Instruments Materials

Objects Space

Structures

TimeTime

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The basic requirementsThe basic requirements

To review and implement the old Soggettario’s terms, according to the three-relationship model of thesauri

To have a monolingual Thesaurus, with the possibility of a multilingual development

To create a national tool, dedicated to both general and specialized libraries

To ensure its application in the indexing of various non-book materials

To ensure cooperation

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Links between the preferred terms of the new ‘Soggettario’ and the DDC numbers

interdisciplinary number provided in the Relative Index or the comprehensive number provided in the schedules when the former is not available

the notation should be as full as possible and built up if necessary

when no interdisciplinary number is provided in the Relative Index or the comprehensive number is not available in the schedules for a term which is however provided in the Index, followed by a single disciplinary subentry, this term should be assigned the number corresponding to that subentry, e.g. Anestetics

Pharmacokinetics 615.781

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Links between the preferred terms of the new ‘Soggettario’ and the DDC numbers

Should there be no literary warrant prevailing and should the BNI have assigned more than one classification number belonging to various disciplines, without anyone prevailing, select the classification number corresponding to the semantic category assigned to the terms

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Links between the preferred terms of the new ‘Soggettario’ and the DDC numbers

Problems arisen from this work Consistency between the semantic aspect of the

preferred terms and their different meaning in the DDC

How to integrate the facet analysis used to categorize terms with the disciplinary logic of the DDC

The structure of the Thesaurus has been given the definition of “moderate polyhierarchy”, that is, tending to a monohierarchical structure

Interdisciplinary or comprehensive treatment of each concept: missing other information dealing with the concept within specific disciplines

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Links between the DDC vocabulary and the Prototypal Thesaurus

synonyms and morphological variants found in DDC schedules, Relative Index or Tables for Thesaurus preferred terms have to be linked with an equivalence relationship

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Linking DDC numbers to the new Soggettario italiano

Thanks for your attention federica.paradisi@bncf.firenze.sbn.

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