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Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet (; ; 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944) was a Belgian author, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist; predicting the arrival of the internet before World War II, he is among those considered to be the father of
information science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. ...
, a field he called "documentation". Otlet created the
Universal Decimal Classification The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a bibliographic and library classification representing the systematic arrangement of all branches of human knowledge organized as a coherent system in which knowledge fields are related and inter-link ...
, which would later become a
faceted classification A faceted classification is a classification scheme used in organizing knowledge into a systematic order. A faceted classification uses semantic categories, either general or subject-specific, that are combined to create the full classification ent ...
. Otlet was responsible for the development of an early information retrieval tool, the "" (RBU) which utilized 3x5 inch index cards, used commonly in library catalogs around the world (now largely displaced by the advent of the
online public access catalog The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with ''library catalog'', is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries. Online catalogs have largely replaced the analog card catalogs previously u ...
(OPAC)). Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world's knowledge, culminating in two books, the ' (1934) and ' (1935). In 1907, following a huge international conference, Otlet and
Henri La Fontaine Henri La Fontaine (; 22 April 1854 – 14 May 1943), was a Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913 because "he was the effective leader of the peace movement in ...
created the Central Office of International Associations, which was renamed to the
Union of International Associations The Union of International Associations (UIA) is a non-profit non-governmental research institute and documentation center based in Brussels, Belgium, and operating under United Nations mandate. It was founded in 1907 under the name Central Offi ...
in 1910, and which is still located in
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. They also created a great international center called at first (World Palace), later, the Mundaneum to house the collections and activities of their various organizations and institutes. Otlet and La Fontaine were
peace activist A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world pe ...
s who endorsed the internationalist politics of the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...
and its
International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, sometimes League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, was an advisory organization for the League of Nations which aimed to promote international exchange between scientists, ...
(the forerunner of
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
). Otlet and La Fontaine witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of information, resulting in the creation of new kinds of international organization. They saw in this organization an emerging global
polity A polity is an identifiable political entity – a group of people with a collective identity, who are organized by some form of institutionalized social relations, and have a capacity to mobilize resources. A polity can be any other group of ...
, and wished to help solidify it. La Fontaine won the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...
in 1913.


Early life and career

Otlet was born in
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
,
Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
on 23 August 1868, the oldest child of Édouard Otlet (Brussels 13 June 1842- Blanquefort,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, 20 October 1907) and Maria (née Van Mons). His father, Édouard, was a wealthy businessman who made his fortune selling
tram A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport ...
s around the world. His mother died in 1871 at the age of 24, when Otlet was three. Through his mother, he was related to the ''Van Mons'' family, a prosperous family, and to the Verhaeren family, of which
Emile Verhaeren Emil or Emile may refer to: Literature *'' Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau * ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life *'' Emil and the Detecti ...
was one of the most important Belgian poets. His father kept him out of school, hiring tutors instead, until he was 11, believing that classrooms were a stifling environment. Otlet, as a child, had few friends, and played regularly only with his younger brother Maurice. He soon developed a love of reading and books. At the age of six, a temporary decline in his father's wealth caused the family to move to Paris. At the age of 11, Paul went to school for the first time, a
Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...
school in
Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
, where he stayed for the next three years. The family then returned to Brussels, and Paul studied at the prestigious
Collège Saint-Michel Collège Saint-Michel (German: Kollegium St. Michael) is a Gymnasium school located in Fribourg, Switzerland. It was established in 1582 by the Jesuit order as a boys' school. Personalities Rectors * Pierre Michel (1582–1888) * Jean-Ba ...
in Brussels. In 1894, his father became a
senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
in the
Belgian Senate The Senate ( nl, Senaat, ; french: Sénat, ; german: Senat) is one of the two chambers of the bicameral Federal Parliament of Belgium, the other being the Chamber of Representatives. It is considered to be the "upper house" of the Federal Parli ...
for the Catholic Party (until 1900). His father remarried to Valerie Linden, daughter of famed botanist
Jean Jules Linden Jean Jules Linden (12 February 1817,Jean Linden, expl ...
; the two eventually had five additional children. The family travelled often during this time, going on holidays and business trips to
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
, France and
Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...
. Otlet was educated at the
Catholic University of Leuven University of Leuven or University of Louvain (french: Université de Louvain, link=no; nl, Universiteit Leuven, link=no) may refer to: * Old University of Leuven (1425–1797) * State University of Leuven (1817–1835) * Catholic University of L ...
and at the Free University of Brussels, where he earned a law degree on 15 July 1890. He married his step-cousin, Fernande Gloner, soon afterward, on 9 December 1890. He then clerked with famed lawyer Edmond Picard, a friend of his father's. Otlet soon became dissatisfied with his legal career, and began to take an interest in
bibliography Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
. His first published work on the subject was the essay "Something about bibliography", written in 1892. In it he expressed the belief that books were an inadequate way to store information, because the arrangement of facts contained within them was an arbitrary decision on the part of the author, making individual facts difficult to locate. A better storage system, Otlet wrote in his essay, would be cards containing individual "chunks" of information, that would allow "all the manipulations of classification and continuous interfiling." In addition would be needed "a very detailed synoptic outline of knowledge" that could allow classification of all of these chunks of data. In 1891, Otlet met
Henri La Fontaine Henri La Fontaine (; 22 April 1854 – 14 May 1943), was a Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913 because "he was the effective leader of the peace movement in ...
, a fellow lawyer with shared interests in bibliography and international relations, and the two became good friends. They were commissioned in 1892 by Belgium's Societé des Sciences sociales et politiques (Society of social and political sciences) to create bibliographies for various of the social sciences; they spent three years doing this. In 1895, they discovered the
Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Section 4.1 ...
, a library classification system that had been invented in 1876. They decided to try to expand this system to cover the classification of facts that Otlet had previously imagined. They wrote to the system's creator,
Melvil Dewey Melville Louis Kossuth "Melvil" Dewey (December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931) was an influential American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification, a founder of the Lake Placid Club, and a chief l ...
, asking for permission to modify his system in this way; he agreed, so long as their system was not translated into English. They began work on this expansion soon afterwards and thus created the
Universal Decimal Classification The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a bibliographic and library classification representing the systematic arrangement of all branches of human knowledge organized as a coherent system in which knowledge fields are related and inter-link ...
. During this time, Otlet and his wife then had two sons, Marcel and Jean, in quick succession. Otlet founded the (IIB) in 1895, later renamed as (in English) the
International Federation for Information and Documentation The International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) was an international organization that was created to promote universal access to all recorded knowledge through the creation of an international classification system. FID stand ...
(FID). In 1894, he had
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...
architect Octave van Rysselberghe build his mansion in Brussels, the so-called Hotel Otlet.


The Universal Bibliographic Repertory

In 1895, Otlet and La Fontaine also began the creation of a collection of index cards, meant to catalog facts, that came to be known as the "" (RBU), or the "Universal Bibliographic Repertory". By the end of 1895 it had grown to 400,000 entries; later it would reach more than 15 million entries. In 1896, Otlet set up a fee-based service to answer questions by mail, by sending the requesters copies of the relevant index cards for each query; scholar Charles van den Heuvel has referred to the service as an "analog
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
". By 1912, this service responded to over 1,500 queries a year. Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search. Otlet envisioned a copy of the RBU in each major city around the world, with Brussels holding the master copy. At various times between 1900 and 1914, attempts were made to send full copies of the RBU to cities such as Paris, Washington, D.C. and
Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...
; however, difficulties in copying and transportation meant that no city received more than a few hundred thousand cards.


The Universal Decimal Classification

In 1904, Otlet and La Fontaine began to publish their classification scheme, which they termed the
Universal Decimal Classification The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a bibliographic and library classification representing the systematic arrangement of all branches of human knowledge organized as a coherent system in which knowledge fields are related and inter-link ...
. The UDC was originally based on Melvil Dewey's Decimal classification system. Otlet and La Fontaine contacted Melvil Dewey to inquire if they could modify the Dewey Decimal System to suit the perimeters of their bibliographic project, namely, organizing information in the social and natural sciences. Dewey granted them permission as long as it substantially differed from his original version. They worked with numerous subject experts, for example with
Herbert Haviland Field Herbert Haviland Field (April 25, 1868 – April 5, 1921) was an American zoologist who founded the Concilium Bibliographicum, a leading science information service in the early twentieth century and was the father of Noel Field and Hermann Fiel ...
at the
Concilium Bibliographicum The Concilium Bibliographicum was established in Zurich. Switzerland in 1895 by the U.S. zoologist Herbert Haviland Field in response to the lack of timely and complete bibliographies to serve the new sciences that had begun to emerge in the late ...
for Zoology, and completed this initial publication in 1907. The system defines not only detailed subject classifications, but also an algebraic notation for referring to the intersection of several subjects; for example, the notation "31: 22+669485)" refers to the
statistics Statistics (from German: '' Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, indust ...
of
mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the econom ...
and
metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...
in
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...
. The UDC is an example of an analytico-synthetic classification, i.e., it permits the linking of one concept to another. Although some have described it as faceted, it is not, though there are some faceted elements in it. A truly faceted classification consists solely of simple concepts; there are many compound concepts listed in the UDC. It is still used by many libraries and bibliographic services outside the English-speaking world, and in some non-traditional contexts such as the
BBC Archives BBC Archives are collections documenting the BBC's broadcasting history, including copies of television and radio broadcasts, internal documents, photographs, online content, sheet music, commercially available music, BBC products (including ...
.


Personal difficulties and World War I

In 1906, with his father Édouard near death and his businesses falling apart, Paul and his brother and five step-siblings formed a company, ("Otlet Brothers") to try to manage these businesses, which included mines and railways. Paul, though he was consumed with his bibliographic work, became president of the company. In 1907, Édouard died, and the family struggled to maintain all parts of the business. In April 1908, Paul Otlet and his wife began divorce proceedings. Otlet remarried in 1912, to Cato Van Nederhesselt. In 1913, La Fontaine won the
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Chemistry, Physics, Physiolo ...
, and invested his winnings into Otlet and La Fontaine's bibliographic ventures, which were suffering from lack of funding. Otlet journeyed to the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
in early 1914 to try to get additional funding from the U.S. Government, but his efforts soon came to a halt due to the outbreak of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
. Otlet returned to Belgium, but quickly fled after it became occupied by the Germans; he spent the majority of the war in Paris and various cities in
Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. Both his sons fought in the Belgian army, and one of them, Jean, died during the war in the
Battle of the Yser The Battle of the Yser (french: Bataille de l'Yser, nl, Slag om de IJzer) was a battle of the First World War that took place in October 1914 between the towns of Nieuwpoort and Diksmuide, along a stretch of the Yser River and the Yperlee ...
. Otlet spent much of the war trying to bring about peace, and the creation of multinational institutions that he felt could avert future wars. In 1914, he published a book, "" ("The End of War") that defined a "World Charter of Human Rights" as the basis for an international federation.


The Mundaneum

In 1910, Otlet and La Fontaine first envisioned a "city of knowledge", which Otlet originally named the "" ("World Palace"), that would serve as a central repository for the world's information. In 1919, soon after the end of World War I, they convinced the government of Belgium to give them the space and funding for this project, arguing that it would help Belgium bolster its bid to house the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...
headquarters. They were given space in the left wing of the , a government building in
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
. They then hired staff to help add to their Universal Bibliographic Repertory. In 1921 Otlet wrote to
W. E. B. Du Bois William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up i ...
offering the use of the Palais Mondial for the 2nd Pan-African Congress. Although both Otlet and Fontaine offered a warm welcome to the Congress, these sentiments were not shared across all of Belgian society. The Brussels-based paper ''Neptune'' stated that the organisers – particularly the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People were funded by the
Bolsheviks The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
– and raised concern that it might lead to difficulties in the
Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (french: Congo belge, ; nl, Belgisch-Congo) was a Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960. The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in 1964. Colo ...
by drawing together "all the ne’er-do-wells of the various tribes of the Colony, aside from some hundreds of labourers". The Palais Mondial was briefly shuttered in 1922, due to lack of support from the government of Prime Minister
Georges Theunis Georges (George) Emile Léonard Theunis (28 February 1873 – 4 January 1966) was the prime minister of Belgium from 16 December 1921 to 13 May 1925 and again from 20 November 1934 to 25 March 1935. He was governor of the National Bank of Belgi ...
, but was reopened after lobbying from Otlet and La Fontaine. Otlet renamed the Palais Mondial to the Mundaneum in 1924. The RBU steadily grew to 13 million index cards in 1927; by its final year, 1934, it had reached more than 15 million. Index cards were stored in custom-designed cabinets, and indexed according to the Universal Decimal Classification. The collection also grew to include files (including letters, reports, newspaper articles, etc.) and images, contained in separate rooms; the index cards were meant to catalog all of these as well. The Mundaneum eventually contained 100,000 files and millions of images. In 1934, the Belgian government again cut off funding for the project, and the offices were closed. (Otlet protested by keeping vigil outside the locked offices, but to no avail.) The collection remained untouched within those offices, however, until 1940, when
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
invaded Belgium. Requisitioning the Mundaneum's quarters to hold a collection of
Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
art and destroying substantial amounts of its collections in the process, the Germans forced Otlet and his colleagues to find a new home for the Mundaneum. In a large but decrepit building in
Leopold Park Leopold Park (french: Parc Léopold, ; nl, Leopoldspark) is a public park of located within the Leopold Quarter ( European Quarter) of Brussels, Belgium. It is adjacent to the Paul-Henri Spaak building, the seat of the European Parliament. I ...
they reconstituted the Mundaneum as best as they could, and there it remained until it was forced to move again in 1972, well after Otlet's death.


The World City

The World City or Cité Mondiale is a utopian vision by Paul Otlet of a city which like a universal exhibition brings together all the leading institutions of the world. The World City would radiate knowledge to the rest of the world and construct peace and universal cooperation. Otlet’s idea to design a utopian city dedicated to international institutions was largely inspired by the contemporary publication in 1913 by the Norwegian-American sculptor
Hendrik Christian Andersen Hendrik Christian Andersen (17 April 1872 in Bergen – 19 December 1940 in Rome) was a Norwegian-American sculptor, painter and urban planner. Background Andersen was born in Bergen, Norway to parents Anders Andersen from Lærdal and Helene ...
and the French architect
Ernest Hébrard Ernest Hébrard (1875–1933) was a French architect, archaeologist and urban planner, best known for his urban plan for the center of Thessaloniki, Greece, after the great fire of 1917. Background Hebrard studied at the École des Beaux-A ...
of an impressive series of Beaux-Arts plans for a World Centre of Communication (1913). For the design of his World City, Otlet collaborated with several architects. In this way a whole series of designs for the World City was developed. The most elaborated plans were: the design of a Mundaneum (1928) and a World City (1929) by
Le Corbusier Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (6 October 188727 August 1965), known as Le Corbusier ( , , ), was a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. He was ...
in Geneva next to the palace of the League of Nations, by Victor Bourgeois in Tervuren (1931) next to the Congo Museum, again by Le Corbusier (in collaboration with
Huib Hoste Hubrecht (Huib) Hoste (6 February 1881 – 18 August 1957) was a Belgian architect, designer and urban planner. He is considered the pioneer of modern architecture in Belgium. Life Huib Hoste was born in Bruges on 6 February 1881. His birth w ...
) on the left bank in Antwerp (1933), by Maurice Heymans in Chesapeake Bay near Washington (1935), and by Stanislas Jassinski and Raphaël Delville on the left bank in Antwerp (1941). In these different designs the program of the World City stayed more or less fixed, containing a World Museum, a World University, a World Library and Documentation Centre, Offices for the International Associations, Offices or Embassies for the Nations, an Olympic Centre, a residential area, and a park.


Exploring new media

Otlet integrated new media, as they were invented, into his vision of the networked knowledge-base of the future. In the early 1900s, Otlet worked with engineer
Robert Goldschmidt Robert B. Goldschmidt (1877–1935) was a Belgian chemist, physicist, and engineer who first proposed the idea of standardized microfiche (microfilm). Goldschmidt was a polymath who also made advances in aviation and radio, among other fields. ...
on storing bibliographic data on
microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. ...
(then known as "micro-photography"). These experiments continued into the 1920s, and by the late 1920s he attempted along with colleagues to create an encyclopedia printed entirely on microfilm, known as the ', which was housed in the Mundaneum. In the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote about radio and television as other forms of conveying information, writing in the 1934 ' that "one after another, marvellous inventions have immensely extended the possibilities of documentation." In the same book, he predicted that media that would convey feel, taste and smell would also eventually be invented, and that an ideal information-conveyance system should be able to handle all of what he called "sense-perception documents".


Political views and involvement

Otlet was a firm believer in international cooperation to promote both the spread of knowledge and peace between nations. A self-identified liberal, universalist and pacifist, his endeavor to catalog and classify is an expression of the commitment to the
Eurocentric Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western worl ...
project to structure knowledge according to universal categories and taxonomies, of which the
Universal Decimal Classification The Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is a bibliographic and library classification representing the systematic arrangement of all branches of human knowledge organized as a coherent system in which knowledge fields are related and inter-link ...
is an example. The Union of International Associations, which he had founded in 1907 with Henri La Fontaine, later participated to the development of both the
League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...
and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, which was later merged into
UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
. At several occasions, Otlet published racist statements dressed up as scientific facts, starting at the beginning of his career with ''L'Afrique Aux Noirs'' (1888) where he argued that white people or 'westernized' blacks were to be tasked with 'civilising' Africa. Similarly, in ''Monde'' (1935), near the end of his life, he claimed the biological superiority of white people. His interest in advancing 'The African Issue' was fuelled by a firm conviction of the superiority of European culture and intelligence which fitted the Enlightenment project that he was dedicated to. Otlet’s organisational support to the 1921
Pan-African Congress The Pan-African Congress was a series of eight meetings, held in 1919 in Paris (1st Pan-African Congress), 1921 in London, Brussels and Paris (2nd Pan-African Congress), 1923 in London (3rd Pan-African Congress), 1927 in New York City (4th Pan-Afr ...
at the ''Palais Mondial'' (later: Mundaneum) therefore needs to be considered in connection with the racist statements that he published both before and after the event. In 1933, Otlet proposed building in Belgium near
Antwerp Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504,
a "gigantic neutral World City" to employ a massive number of workers, in order to alleviate the unemployment generated by the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
.


Fade into obscurity

Otlet died in 1944, not long before the end of World War II, having seen his major project, the Mundaneum, shuttered, and having lost all his funding sources. According to Otlet scholar W. Boyd Rayward: : "The First World War marked the end of the intellectual as well as sociopolitical era in which Otlet had functioned hitherto with remarkable success. After the war, he and his schemes were never taken seriously except with the circle of his disciples. He quickly lost the support of the Belgian government. In the late 1920s he faced the defection of his followers in the International Institute of Documentation, as the International Institute of Bibliography " And: : "Perhaps at one level, Otlet, is best regarded as a fin de siècle figure whose work enjoyed a considerable measure of acceptance and support at home and abroad before World War I. But after the War, it rapidly lost favour. Once influential nationally and internationally, at least in a relatively specialised circle, Otlet came to be regarded as difficult and obstructive as he grew old. His ideas and the extraordinary institutional arrangements in which they had finally come to be expressed, the Palais Mondial or Mundaneum, seemed grandiose, unfocused and passé. In the early 1930s there was a quietly dramatic struggle to remove the International Institute of Bibliography, transformed eventually into the International Federation for Documentation, from this institutional complex and from under what was considered to be the dead hand of the past - effectively the hand of the still very much alive but ageing Otlet." In the wake of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, the contributions of Otlet to the field of information science were lost sight of in the rising popularity of the ideas of American information scientists such as
Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all warti ...
,
Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularl ...
,
Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and '' hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. Nelson coined the terms '' trans ...
and by such theorists of information organization as
Seymour Lubetzky Seymour Lubetzky (April 28, 1898 – April 5, 2003) was a major cataloging theorist and a prominent librarian. Biography Born in the Russian Empire as Shmaryahu Lubetzky, he worked for years at the Library of Congress. He worked as a teacher befo ...
.


Rediscovery

Beginning in the 1980s, and especially after the advent of the
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
in the early 1990s, new interest arose in Otlet's speculations and theories about the organization of knowledge, the use of information technologies, and globalization. His 1934 masterpiece, the ''Traité de documentation'', was reprinted in 1989 by the Centre de Lecture publique de la Communauté française in Belgium. (Neither the Traité nor its companion work, "Monde" (World) has been translated into English so far.) In 1990 Professor W. Boyd Rayward published an English translation of some of Otlet's writings. He also published a biography of Otlet (1975) that was translated into Russian (1976) and Spanish (1996, 1999, and 2005). In 1985, Belgian academic André Canonne raised the possibility of recreating the Mundaneum as an archive and museum devoted to Otlet and others associated with them; his idea initially was to house it in the Belgian city of
Liège Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège. The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far fro ...
. Cannone, with substantial help from others, eventually managed to open the new Mundaneum in
Mons Mons (; German and nl, Bergen, ; Walloon and pcd, Mont) is a city and municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the province of Hainaut, Belgium. Mons was made into a fortified city by Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut in the 12th century. T ...
, Belgium in 1998. This museum is still in operation, and contains the personal papers of Otlet and La Fontaine and the archives of the various organizations they created along with other collections important to the modern history of Belgium.


Analysis of Otlet's theories

Otlet scholar W. Boyd Rayward has written that Otlet's thinking is a product of the 19th century and the philosophy of
positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...
, which holds that, through careful study and the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientifi ...
, an objective view of the world can be gained. According to W. Boyd Rayward, his ideas placed him culturally and intellectually in the
Belle Époque The Belle Époque or La Belle Époque (; French for "Beautiful Epoch") is a period of French and European history, usually considered to begin around 1871–1880 and to end with the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Occurring during the era ...
period of pre–World War I Europe, a period of great "cultural certitude". Otlet's writings have sometimes been called prescient of the current
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. His vision of a great network of
knowledge Knowledge can be defined as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also refer to familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distin ...
was centered on
document A document is a written, drawn, presented, or memorialized representation of thought, often the manifestation of non-fictional, as well as fictional, content. The word originates from the Latin ''Documentum'', which denotes a "teaching" o ...
s and included the notions of
hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text w ...
s,
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
s, remote access, and
social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods fo ...
s—although these notions were described by different names.Charles van den Heuvel, "Building Society, Constructing Knowledge, Weaving the Web". In: W. Boyd Rayward, ed., ''European Modernism and the Information Society. Informing the Present, Understanding the Past''. Aldershot 2008, pp. 127–153 In 1934, Otlet laid out this vision of the computer and internet in what he called "Radiated Library" vision.


Grave

Paul Otlet's grave is located in the Etterbeek Cemetery, in
Wezembeek-Oppem Wezembeek-Oppem is a municipality in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, east of the centre of Brussels. The municipality only comprises the town of Wezembeek-Oppem proper. On January 1, 2016, Wezembeek-Oppem had a total population of 14,0 ...
, Flemish Brabant, Belgium.


See also


People

*
Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the An ...
*
Andries van Dam Andries "Andy" van Dam (born December 8, 1938) is a Dutch-American professor of computer science and former vice-president for research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hy ...
*
Conrad Gessner Conrad Gessner (; la, Conradus Gesnerus 26 March 1516 – 13 December 1565) was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zürich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly realised his tale ...
*
Douglas Engelbart Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularl ...
* George Dyson *
Henri La Fontaine Henri La Fontaine (; 22 April 1854 – 14 May 1943), was a Belgian international lawyer and president of the International Peace Bureau. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1913 because "he was the effective leader of the peace movement in ...
*
Herbert Haviland Field Herbert Haviland Field (April 25, 1868 – April 5, 1921) was an American zoologist who founded the Concilium Bibliographicum, a leading science information service in the early twentieth century and was the father of Noel Field and Hermann Fiel ...
*
J.C.R. Licklider Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (; March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J. C. R. or "Lick", was an American psychologistMiller, G. A. (1991), "J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist", ''Journal of the Acoustical Society of A ...
*
Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson (born June 17, 1937) is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms ''hypertext'' and '' hypermedia'' in 1963 and published them in 1965. Nelson coined the terms '' trans ...
*
Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profes ...
*
Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all warti ...
* W. Boyd Rayward


Ideas

*
As We May Think "As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. It was first published in ''The Atlantic'' in July 1945 and republished in an abridged ...
* External memory *
Global brain The global brain is a neuroscience-inspired and futurological vision of the planetary information and communications technology network that interconnects all humans and their technological artifacts. As this network stores ever more information, t ...
*
Hypermedia Hypermedia, an extension of the term hypertext, is a nonlinear medium of information that includes graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks. This designation contrasts with the broader term ''multimedia'', which may include non-interacti ...
*
Hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references ( hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically ...
*
Intelligence amplification Intelligence amplification (IA) (also referred to as cognitive augmentation, machine augmented intelligence and enhanced intelligence) refers to the effective use of information technology in augmenting human intelligence. The idea was first pr ...
*
Memex Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of ...
* Project Xanadu *
Victorian Internet ''The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers'' is a 1998 book by Tom Standage. The book was first published in September 1998 through Walker & Company and discusses the development ...
* World Brain *
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...


Fields of study

*
Bibliography Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliography ...
*
Documentation science Documentation science is the study of the recording and retrieval of information. Documentation science gradually developed into the broader field of information science. Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Henri La Fontaine (1854–1943), both Belgi ...
*
Information science Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. ...
*
Knowledge organization Knowledge organization (KO), organization of knowledge, organization of information, or information organization is an intellectual discipline concerned with activities such as document description, indexing, and classification that serve to ...
*
Library and information science Library and information science(s) or studies (LIS) is an interdisciplinary field of study that deals generally with organization, access, collection, and protection/regulation of information, whether in physical (e.g. art, legal proceedings, et ...


References


Bibliography

*Day, Ronald E. “Documents from Head to Toe: Bodies of Knowledge in the Works of Paul Otlet and Georges Bataille,” ''Library Trends'' 66 (Winter 2018): 395-408. * Ducheyne, Steffen, "Paul Otlet's Theory of Knowledge and Linguistic Objectivism", in ''Knowledge Organization'', no 32, 2005, pp. 110–116. * Heuvel, Charles van den, "Building Society, Constructing Knowledge, Weaving the Web". in ''European Modernism and the Information Society – Informing the Present, Understanding the Past'', Aldershot, 2008, pp. 127–153. * Judge, Anthony
“Union of International Associations – Virtual Organization – Paul Otlet's 100-year Hypertext Conundrum?”
2001. * Levie, Françoise

Bruxelles, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2006. * Otlet, Paul, '' Traité de documentation'', Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934. * Otlet, Paul, '' Monde, essai d'universalisme'', Bruxelles, Mundaneum, 1935. * * Popova, Maria
“The Birth of the Information Age: How Paul Otlet’s Vision for Cataloging and Connecting Humanity Shaped Our World”
''Brain Pickings'', 2014. * Rayward, Warden Boyd, ''Universum informastsii Zhizn' i deiatl' nost' Polia Otle'', Trans. R.S. Giliarevesky, Moscow, VINITI, 1976. * Rayward, Warden Boyd, Otlet, Paul
''International Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays''
Amsterdam,
Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as '' The Lancet'', '' Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', ...
, 1990. * Sánchez, Zurita, Manuel, Juan
El paradigma otletiano como base de un modelo para la organización y difusión del conocimiento científico
México, El Author, Tesina, Colegio de Bibliotecología, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM, 2001. * Rayward, Warden Boyd, ''El Universo de la Documentacion: la obra de Paul Otlet sobra documentacion y organizacion internacional'', Trans. Pilar Arnau Rived, Madrid, Mundarnau, 2005. * Van Acker, Wouter
“Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education. The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of the Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath”
in ''Perspectives on Science'', Vol.19, nr.1, 2011, p. 32-80. * Van Acker, Wouter, "Universalism as Utopia. A Historical Study of the Schemes and Schemas of Paul Otlet (1868–1944)”, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University Press, Zelzate, 2011. * Van Acker, Wouter, Somsen, Geert, "A Tale of Two World Capitals – the Internationalisms of Pieter Eijkman and Paul Otlet", in '' Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis'', Vol. 90, nr.4, 2012. * Wright, Alex
''Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age''
Oxford University Press, 2014. * Wright, Alex
“Forgotten Forefather”
in ''Boxes & Arrows'', 10 November 2003. * Wright, Alex
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages
Washington D.C., Joseph Henry Press, 2007. * Wright, Alex, "Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age", Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, 384 pages. * Wright, Alex

The New York Times, 17 June 2008.


Documentary films


''Alle Kennis van de Wereld (Biography of Paul Otlet)''
documentary narrated by W. Boyd Rayward, Otlet’s biographer, in English and French, produced for Dutch television in 1998. * Levie, Françoise
''The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World''
DVD, duration 60 minutes, Memento Production, 2006. * Wright, Alex
''The Web That Wasn't: Forgotten Forebears of the Internet''
UX Brighton, 2012. * Snelting, Femke
''Fathers of the Internet''
Verbindingen/Jonctions 14 – "Are You Being Served?”, December 2013. * Rayward, Warden Boyd
Biography of Paul Otlet
(YouTube, 23:20)


Web pages

* Buckland, Michael
''Paul Otlet, Pioneer of Information Management''
* Rayward, Warden Boyd
''Bibliography of the works of Paul Otlet''


Other projects on Paul Otlet’s work

* Theater Adhoc
The Humor and Tragedy of Completeness
on the occasion of the conference on European Modernism and the Information Society – Informing the Present, Understanding the Past, at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 6–8 May 2005.


External links


Mundaneum

Union of International Associations

Universal Decimal Classification

Documentary about Paul Otlet (Internet Archive)
*
The Internet before the Internet
', Perkowitz, Sidney, JSTOR Daily, 5 March 2016

''
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...
'' *
Ideographies of Knowledge
a symposium on Paul Otlet and his work from the perspective of today's knowledge archives; Mundaneum, 2015; incl. video documentation.
Spaces of Information, Intellect and Action
Analog Spaces
The lost promise of the Internet: Meet the man who almost invented cyberspace
''
Salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon, a venue for cosmetic treatments * French term for a drawing room, an architectural space in a home * Salon (gathering), a meeting for learning or enjoyment Arts and entertainment * Salon ( ...
''
The Secret History of Hypertext: he conventional history of computing leaves out some key thinkers
''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Otlet, Paul 1868 births 1944 deaths 20th-century Belgian inventors Information scientists Belgian Christians 20th-century Belgian scientists Belgian bibliographers Free University of Brussels (1834–1969) alumni Belgian librarians Positivists 19th-century Belgian scientists