For Peer Review - GTI Internet

the same principles as when gathering items “together to form a new book” (to use a
phrase from the article slightly out of context). It was this restricted notion of association
that Bush sought to mechanize.
2t-S-1Ed-D-P
As Rayward (1994, 1997) has pointed out, others were at work in the early 1900s
to find mechanical means for associating ideas, and in particular Paul Otlet and the
For Peer Review
International Institute of Bibliography beginning around 1895. (We might speculate that
Vannevar Bush heard about Otlet’s work indirectly, via the visit from Watson Davis in
1932, but there is no solid evidence one way or the other.) Essentially, Otlet’s scheme
was to copy individual ideas or “chunks” of information from articles and books onto
standardized cards, which allowed “all the manipulations of classification and
continuous interfiling.” The cards were filed within a classification system (Universal
Decimal Classification) such that associated ideas would be filed under the same
classification number, perhaps in separate cabinets but still under the same classification.
This allowed researchers to find related concepts that may have been expressed anywhere
within any of the pamphlets, articles or books covered by the system. By 1930, one such
collection of cards had nearly 16 million items.
Otlet also worked with microfilm, and was impressed by the potential of radio,
television and records in achieving the same information and communication goals as
books. In Otlet’s 1934 Traité de Documentation, he envisions someday books being
replaced by the newer technologies. He also envisioned a researcher’s desk with multiple
desktops, electrically controlled filing cabinets such that a desired cabinet would slide
11
John Wiley & Sons
Page 12 of 38