Need to categorize: A comparative look at the categories of the Universal Decimal Classification system (UDC) and Wikipedia

Abstract

This study analyzes the differences between the category structure of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system (which is one of the widely used library classification systems in Europe) and Wikipedia. In particular, we compare the emerging structure of category-links to the structure of classes in the UDC. With this comparison we would like to scrutinize the question of how do knowledge maps of the same domain differ when they are created socially (i.e. Wikipedia) as opposed to when they are created formally (UDC) using classificatio theory. As a case study, we focus on the category of "Arts".Comment: Paper for High Throughput Humanities - a satellite meeting at the European Conference on Complex Systems 2010; Sept. 15, 2010 Lisbon University Institute ISCTE, Lisbon, Portuga