INTRODUCTION

Since the earliest days of Aslib the Universal Decimal Classification has provided topics for meetings. In the 1920's and 1930's the U.D.C. was a focal point of bibliographical controversy and constituted almost the sole theme of the meetings of the British Society for International Bibliography. Dr. S. C. Bradford, who with Professor A. F. C. Pollard founded the B.S.I.B., was also a member of the Aslib Council, and although Aslib never subscribed to the tenet that the U.D.C. could become the panacea for all bibliographical troubles, there was close liaison between the two organizations. The fierceness has gone out of the controversy now; the U.D.C. has its opponents still, but it has long been accepted as one of the foremost systems of classification. Argument now is between those who press for new numbers to cope with the latest developments in science and technology and those who, sharply aware that the value of the U.D.C. in international communication must largely rest on a fundamental stability in the scheme of classification, uphold the slower but surer methods of international collaboration and agreement before the incorporation of new numbers.