Bliss Bibliographic Classification : Annual Lectures

Bliss Classification Association : annual lectures given at AGMs

2010 : BC2 past, present and future. The recent sad death of Jack Mills provides an opportunity to assess the state of the revision of BC2, to reflect on progress made, and to consider the future direction of revision in terms of the needs of knowledge organization, and of users in the 21st century. At this AGM Vanda Broughton presented a statement of intent on behalf of the committee, setting out the way in which we plan to take the classification forward. Information about work on new formats, such as the BC2 thesaurus, and a web-enabled version of the schedules, was supplemented by a presentation on editorial strategy and our vision of how the classification will be completed.

2009 : Putting Bliss on the Web: ways of representing faceted classifications. The Bliss Bibliographic Classification is currently the only major system of documentary classification not to have a web version. Although some draft schedules are available as documents on the website, and machine files are maintained for editorial purposes, there is no version of BC2 that takes advantage of the functionality of the web or uses a common format. Recent work has focused on ways in which this might be achieved, either through the development of in-house software, or through the use and adaptation of some standard representation language, such as SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). Some interesting challenges are presented by the complexity of the relationships in a faceted scheme, as outlined by Leonard Will in a talk given at the 2008 AGM, but which, if solutions can be found, promise a higher level of semantic value. Speakers included Tamara Lopez (Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College, London) and Richard Light, XML consultant

2008 : Bliss on the Web. A talk by Leonard Will discussing formats in which classification schemes have been made available on the Web and options for making BC2 available in this way. The slides shown, with some interpolated notes, are available here in pdf format.