Introduction

After the publication of the printed 23rd Edition (2011), the DDC shifted to an electronic-first model, with revisions published continuously to WebDewey in lieu of traditional printed editions. This decision from OCLC only directly affected the main English DDC, though translation teams have followed a similar course.

In 2015, old job titles for DDC editors were replaced with a simpler, twotrack system: Editor and Senior Editor, roughly analogous to an academic system with assistant and associate professors. The last person to formally hold the title of DDC Editor-in-Chief was Michael Panzer, with longtime chief Joan Mitchell having retired in 2013. Alex Kyrios, the current Senior Editor, joined the editorial team full-time in 2015, having previously served as the first DDC intern in 2011 during the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Print-on-demand versions

Various users have still desired a print format of the classification, leading to the creation of the print-on-demand (PoD) version of the DDC. The first of these was released in July 2018 and, beginning in 2019, new versions have become available each January. The content of each PoD version is like a snapshot of WebDewey data from the beginning of that calendar year. Like traditional printed editions, it lacks the built numbers that display only in WebDewey.

The PoD versions are intended for areas without reliable, fast internet access, as well as any users that simply prefer hard copies. While the PoD versions may informally be called ‘editions’, they are not editions in the traditional bibliographic sense, nor in the DDC's numerical reckoning. They are not a 24th Edition, which does not exist at all. At the time of this writing, there are no plans to designate a 24th Edition, or any future formal editions.

DDC in MARC

From a technical standpoint, a number accessed from WebDewey today is from the 23rd Edition, just as is a number listed in the 2011 printed edition. Of course, the full classification is vast and in many cases, those numbers will be the same. But other areas have seen significant change in the 10+ years since. If a classifier encounters an assigned DDC number labeled as from the 23rd Edition, then, how are they to know if it is truly current? The problem seems new, but is not, in fact. Recall that the classification was first released in electronic form in 1993.