AUTOMATED ALPHABETIC SUBJECT INDEX GENERATION FOR UNIVERSAL DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION IN BELARUSIAN

Abstract

Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is an international classification system that corresponds to the essential classification requirements: internationalism, universality, expansiveness. UDC Tables were translated and published fully or partially in more than 40 languages. UDC is used in nearly 130 countries. In Belarus UDC has been used for the last 50 years. But the official edition of UDC in the Belarusian language was released only in 2016. An alphabetic subject index (ASI) that makes more than a quarter of the edition was prepared with the help of an algorithm, which automated its creation. In the main part of the article an approach to automated ASI generation for Belarusian UDC edition is described in detail. Authors review ASI requirements, compare ASI formats used in different countries. Electronic linguistic resources needed for the automated generation of ASI are described in the article. The detailed step-by-step algorithm is provided. As confirmation of efficiency and correctness of the algorithm, a program prototype of ASI generation system was developed and described in the article. This prototype was directly used in ASI creation for the first edition of UDC in the Belarusian language.

Keywords

• electronic texts processing
• classification systems
• the belarusian language
• universal decimal classification
• alphabetic-subject index