DDC in Europe
On May 30, 2015, EDUG issued a call for statements from its National Library members. Two events in particular in the first half of 2015 were cause for concern: the shutting down of dewey.info
(DDC as Linked Data) on March 10, 2015 and the layoff of the DDC Editor-in-Chief with no replacement on May 21, 2015. In order to convey to OCLC the investment that libraries in Europe have made in Dewey, EDUG solicited statements about usage and intent regarding DDC in the respective countries.
The following eight statements were sent to Mary Sauer-Games and David Whitehair at OCLC. Harriet Aagaard and Elise Conradi had a follow-up meeting with Whitehair at the IFLA conference in Cape Town, where he stated that OCLC was in the process of evaluating the service provided by dewey.info and looking into a restructuring of the Dewey editorial group. EDUG will continue to monitor these developments.
Mary Sauer-Games issued the following response to our concerns, in which she stated that "OCLC remains committed to maintaining, updating and enhancing the DDC for the long term" and informed us about plans for a new leadership position for Dewey: