DDC and Alma: metadata enrichment for librarians and users at the University of Milano (Italy)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that librarians in possession of a vast collection must be in want of a semantic classification. At the University of Milano, more than ever.
In 2020 we understood we couldn't segment the collection according to disciplines for lack of meaningful coverage with any classification.
The size of our book repository made it unthinkable to intervene manually. Since applying AI to the task is not so easy, either, we pursued another approach by enriching our records through the extraction of DDC numbers from other catalogues.
At first, we leveraged the Italian union catalogue SBN, but DDC numbers were mostly associated with Italian publications. Therefore, we extended our reach to sources abroad.
The project addressed 3 key challenges:

matching our bib records with the external records, when common system identifiers are absent;
updating class numbers to conform to WebDewey;
enhancing semantic access for our patrons by adding descriptive subject information.

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