New UDC Licence Scheme

In February 2009, a new UDC licence scheme and new prices have been approved by the UDC Consortium.

There are two main categories of licences: publishing and licences for UDC MRF use.

For many existing and prospective UDC users it is important to understand that they do not need licence if they

• apply UDC schedule content for information and knowledge organization from a copy of a publication (printed or CD-ROM) or by accessing an authorised UDC online service
• manually apply the UDC (i.e. there is no use of the UDC MRF) for organizing and indexing of resources for the purpose of document/shelf arrangement, organization of information gateways and library catalogue and in information retrieval where UDC numbers may appear as a part of your document labels or resource description.

In other words, if your collection (printed or digital) is classified by UDC you do not need a licence to show your collection and to browse and search you UDC metadata on the Web. The presence of UDC numbers on documents/books (information objects) or in bibliographic records (and their listing) in libraries, OPACs, bibliographies, web pages do not require licence.

Licences are needed only for publishing of UDC schedules and to use of UDC MRF data in various scenarios. One of the new licences is for using the UDC MRF for educational purposes (e.g. in library schools).

Following a licence application, licences can be:

• purchased according to the license pricing scheme
• negotiated as non-standard licences for cases when this may be of benefit to users and the UDC development
• granted for free (in exceptional cases)

Read more about licence policy, terms and prices here.