THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

sions and so on. In 1899 a Manual for the physical sciences
appeared; in 1900 manuals for photography and agriculture;
in 1902 manuals for law, locomotion and sports, and one for
the medical sciences. 55 Rules for editing bibliographic notices,
for the publication of bibliographies, and for the formation of
bibliographic repertories on cards appeared in 1900. 66 In 1902,
the Concilium Bibliographicum, which had been revising the
sections of the classification appropriate to its work, issued
separate tables for paleontology, for general biology and
microscopy, for zoology and a combined table for these three
areas. In 1905 Richet and Jordan published a new edition of the
tables for physiology, and in 1906 Field published a second edition
of the tables for anatomy with an IIB imprint. 67 Finally,
during the period 1904 to 1907 the Manuel du Repertoire Bibliographique
Universel, a volume of over two thousand pages,
made its appearance, incorporating all the fascicules of the
classification, and various revisions, corrections and extensions
to the tables which were made during that period. 58
After 1907 the study of the classification continued and
proposals for developing it yet further were drawn up,
weighed and re-examined, though little new work was actually
published before the outbreak of the First World War. 59
The classification was now in the form it would take until the
second, much delayed edition appeared in 1932.
THE BELGIANS AND AMERICANS IN CONFLICT
As the works of publishing the first definitive edition of
the Brussels Decimal Classification got under way in 1902,
Otlet and La Fontaine began to correspond with Melvil Dewey
again. 60 At first desultory, the correspondence grew in
volume and frequency after the Brussels Tables had been completed
in 1905 and as work on the 7th American edition of the
classification gathered momentum. Underlying the Belgian
correspondence was an overriding desire to promote in America
through Dewey the general aims of the Institute, and particularly
to maintain a close correspondence between the American
Decimal Classification and the European version, a correspondence
upon which, as far as Otlet and La Fontaine were
concerned, all international bibliographic co-operation sponsored
by IIB was predicated. Over the American edition of the
classification they had no direct control, but they could try as
much as possible both to ensure that the Belgian edition did
not differ from the 1894 American Dewey upon which it was
modelled (for little notice appears to have been taken of the
6th, 1899 American edition of the classification) and then,
that any new American editions should resemble theirs as
much as possible.
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