[WEB4LIB] Re: Use of DDC in web displays

[Eric Hellman]

a thought:

I imagine that it is only the definitions of the categories which are 
copyrighted by oclc. (You can only copyright an expression of an 
idea, you can't copyright the idea)  Given this, an open source 
project could do a clean-room clone of DDC by deriving category 
descriptions from samples of cataloged items.

At 4:01 PM -0800 12/27/00, Tony Barry wrote:
>At 4:46 PM -0800 26/12/2000, Thomas Dowling wrote:
>>This sort of attitude seems designed to send would-be web catalogers
>>flocking to some such freely accessible starting point to create an
>>open-source subject classification.
>
>Now there is an idea. I could be done perhaps in the way of the 
>WWWVL and could even attract sponsorship from groups doing yahoo 
>type operations.
>
>The support of a large general classification was expensive on paper 
>and needed to be centralised. That's why there are so few of them 
>and many dies (like the Bliss scheme). With the internet available 
>cooperative possibilities abound. Look at web rings for instance.

Eric Hellman
Openly Informatics, Inc.
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