THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

nam), carried on their covers their Contribution Number in
a standard heading explaining what this meant. After 1907,
thellB seems to have acted unilaterally on ever more frequent
occasions in declaring a publication part of the Bibliographia
Universalis. Perhaps this was simply intended to show
the world that the series continued to grow and with it the
international bibliographic co-operation it originally represented.
But by 1907 the series had become to some extent factitious,
and did not represent, other than indirectly and incidentally,
bibliographic co-operation springing from the IIB with
the RBU looming in the background. By this time, to say
nothing of several crises in Otlet's private life, he and La Fontaine
had become involved in the expansion of the OIB into a
complex of different offices which were to form the nucleus,
the intellectual hub, of an organisation of international associations.
They were not able, as a result, to keep up the pressure
of advice and encouragement that they had first exerted
on behalf of the Bibliographic! Universalis, and there was a general
slowing down after that time in the production of bibliographies
standardised according to IIB Rules and destined
for the RBU.
THE COMPILATION OF THE UNIVERSAL
BIBLIOGRAPHIC REPERTORY
At the central office of the Institute in Brussels, as the
years went by, the RBU, for which the Bibliographia Universalis
provided standardised material for inclusion, gradually
expanded. In 1897 it contained a million and a half notices. 22
A problem in its early development was created by the absence
of full classification tables. Many notices were classified
tentatively by the abridged tables, the rest by the full tables
where they existed. It was intended that the first group would
be classified a second time, and that eventually only one minutely
classified subject series would exist. In 1899 the Author
Repertory had grown to 1,274,000 notices, the «Abridged»
Subject Repertory contained 779,000 notices, and the Full
Subject Repertory 839,450. 23
The organisation of these repertories did not prove to be
simple. A number of «transitional» repertories had to be established
to hold cards for «indexing in the course of execution
and to avoid confusion among notices which had reached different
stages of elaboration and classification*. 24 By 1903 it
was felt that the author and subject repertories were not enough
in themselves to ensure the maximum usefulness of the
RBU and to them were added others involving duplication of
elements taken from them. At this time, too, each of the repertories
was given distinguishing letters. The main alphabetical
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