THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

could therefore maintain its spirit more easily. Dewey answered
this letter with a rather full description of how the classification
had been compiled:
There is hardly a subject of the Decimal Classification where we could
say we adopted anyone's classification. At first we collected all the
headings from all the subject catalogues of libraries we could get,
to find what groupings had been adopted in an effort to meet the
needs of libraries. Then, in consultation with professors and other specialists
on each subject, we tried to arrange this material under the
heads that would practically be most useful. The inverted Baconian
order used by W. T. Harris, now U. S. Commissioner of Education,
determined the general order but the classes were bound to be pretty
nearly what they are. We have compared all along everything available
in classification, but in the nature of things, most classifications were
from the standpoint of a scientific specialist and not of a librarian
collecting and classifying a great quantity of books, pamphlets, clippings
and notes. Our advice has been chiefly from university professors
in the various subjects, and other specialists working from distinctly
practical ends. 71
On the whole, the co-operation between the Belgians and
the Americans did not get under way soon enough or quickly
enough for it to have had much influence on the setting up of
the tables of the classification contained in the Manual of the
RBU. But after 1906 when the Americans began to work much
more actively than they had done before on the 7th American
edition of the classification, finally issued in 1911, Otlet and
La Fontaine found themselves fighting a protracted rearguard
action to protect their developments of the classification and
with them the cause of bibliographical unity between America
and Europe. It began with May Seymour, Dewey's editorial assistant
for the DC, asking La Fontaine for a list of the treatises
used by the Belgians to develop the Brussels Dewey.
Dewey without waiting for an answer followed her letter with
another:
I want to put it much stronger than has Miss Seymour. I admire
so greatly the spirit in which you and your colleagues have worked
that I shall strain a point wherever possible to make our people satisfied
to accept your decisions. I want you, therefore, to give me
all the light you can that will help us to get your point of view.
Can you not make a list of people who did the work on the different
subjects, so if occasion arises we can ask further questions. My
attitude of mind is to keep in harmony with you unless it is going to
make serious trouble here.
La Fontaine, who wrote and spoke English with relative ease,
and with whom May Seymour seems to have preferred to correspond,
handed the letters to Otlet to answer, which he did,
much gratified by the expressions of good will and co-operation
they contained. 72 Over the next few years a sporadic correspondence
ensued as parts of the Belgian tables were translated
into English and sent for checking to Otlet and La Fontaine,
and as both new European and American proposals for re-
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