Need to categorize: A comparative look at the categories of Universal Decimal Classification system 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, the authors compare the emerging structure of category-links to the structure of classes in the UDC. The authors scrutinize the question of how 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 classification theory. As a case study, we focus on the category of "Arts". © 2012 ISAST.