I am sorry not to be able to make it to the UDC conference Classification at a Crossroads (via ISKO UK) in the Hague, as I am trying to get a better grasp of UDC at the moment. I would especially like to hear the paper on UDC and folksonomies. One of the issues I am thinking about is how to preserve the richness of a UDC-based classification while increasing usability. I am mulling over whether harvesting folksonomic tagging is a good way to get at the terminology that users prefer, and whether attaching additional thesaurus terms to a core classification is a good way of bridging the gap between the needs of long-term indexing and instant retrievability.
Such a shame you won’t be there, I’d have loved to talk to you about UDC/Lonclass. The things you suggest make a lot of sense. Too often people talk about folksonomy or web2 techniques in opposition to traditional subject classifications, but there ought to be ways of combining both styles…