THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

vision in the tables were drawn up. In 1908 Dewey received
modifications suggested by Field in Zurich for the tables for
610, 611 and 612 and he was inclined to accept them. They were
sent off to Brussels some time early in 1909 for comment. 73
Early in 1908 Adolf Law Voge appeared in Dewey's office
with a proposal to develop 621.3, Electricity in Industry,
and with a request for $1,000 to permit him to go away to do
this. Dewey was impressed by Voge, and wrote off to Field
and to Otlet making enquiries about him. All that Otlet knew
of him was that he had worked with Field in Zurich, was an
intelligent and hardworking man with a good knowledge of
the Decimal Classification, and had left th-i Concilium Bibliographicum
to take a better position with an American
industrial concern. The negotiations for this position had fallen
through as a result of a general financial slump at the time.
Early in 1908, Voge had decided to turn once again to bibliography
and to Europe, and was soon expected in Brussels. By
the end of 1908, Voge had made suggestions for modifications
in 640, 661 and 669. His study of the Classification of the
chemical elements in 54 had been published in the IIB Bulletin
and as a separate IIB Publication in that same year. 74
A controversy flared up as a result of Voge's work, for he
had suggested, especially in chemistry, fundamental changes
in the subdivisions of the 1894 Classification. Otlet and La
Fontaine addressed a joint note to Dewey, Field and General
Sebert about it. A conversation with Sebert in Paris, and the
perusal of correspondence which had passed between the Americans,
Clement Andrews of the John Crerar Library and Walter
Stanley Biscoe of the New York State Library (one of
Dewey's most faithful and hardworking students and assistants),
convinced Otlet completely of the unacceptability of
Voge's suggested changes in light of «the great effort which
was made in the preparation of the tables of the Institute to
conserve your [Dewey's 1894] classification numbers*. Apparently
the Americans acquiesced in this view, too, for a short
while later, Otlet wrote to May Seymour that he noted, with
respect to the development of 54 Chemistry, that «you have not
given approval to Mr. Voge, and very cautiously leave all radical
modification to a future edition*. The question, he observed,
«is not ripe and Mr. Voge, has no fixed opinions himself*.
75
Nevertheless, a battle line had quite definitely formed by
this time. In 1904 May Seymour had sent a translation of the
Belgian tables for the military sciences to La Fontaine to
check. It was a good translation, he observed, but «first you
have not translated the introductory notes of the military tables
and these notes are absolutely necessary to understand the
whole scheme, and second you have not adopted our writing of
101