Universal Decimal Classification in the Digital Infrastructure of Scientific and Technical Information

On April 15, 2026, the All-Russian Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of the Russian Academy of Sciences hosted the Scientific and Methodological Seminar “UDC 2026”, dedicated to current issues in the development and application of the Universal Decimal Classification. The focus was on the transition of the UDC from a traditional bibliographic tool to a dynamic digital platform. Presentation topics covered the automatic interpretation of complex UDC indices and their representation in machinereadable formats, the creation of a national digital infrastructure for the tables (electronic catalogue, programmatic access via API, semantic search), as well as practical aspects of the indexing methodology for multi-aspect documents. Special emphasis was placed on the pilot implementation of the UDC electronic catalogue in the Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences — the first library to gain access to the system. The seminar captured the dual nature of the UDC as both a stable hierarchical structure and a flexible analytical-synthetic apparatus, opening up opportunities for creating personalized classifiers based on modern data processing technologies.