THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

author repertory was given the initial N (presumably for
Noms), the repertory classified by the extended Dewey tables
the letter A, and that by the abridged Dewey the letter B. To
the first repertory was added one for the titles of periodicals,
NR (Noms des Revues?) and one for the titles of books, NL
(Noms des Livres?). A subject repertory by geography (repertory
AG) was added to repertory A. Here were placed duplicate
cards from the main repertory for items dealing with a
given geographical place — country, region, province, town,
•etc. Another repertory was that designated NRT, for indexed
periodicals.
This repertory constitutes, in principle, a duplicate of other repertories
where they comprise notices of articles in periodicals. We have been
led to begin this repertory to ensure an effective control over our
other repertories. In these, the notices of articles of periodicals are
dispersed according to the order of the alphabet by author's names or
by words in the title, or according to the subject treated. In the Repertory
of Indexed Periodicals, on the other hand, under the name of
each periodical one should be able to find an indication of all the
articles which have appeared in it arranged by chronological order
of publication. 25
By 1903 it had also become necessary to establish a controlled
list of the subject headings used in the Decimal Classification.
This was designated Repertory I and by the end of the
year contained over 20,000 headings in five languages «with
their references, synonyms... and the classification number corresponding
to them». 26 A careful record of all the sources
used in building up these various repertories was maintained,
and this record, designated Repertory IV, contained 430 items
by the end of 1903.
Among the principal sources of entries for the Author Repertory
were the bibliographies of the Bibliographia Universalis.
Other major sources were the printed catalogs of the great
national libraries. In 1902 Otlet made an exchange agreement
with Putnam, Librarian of the U. S. Library of Congress. As
a result of this agreement two copies of all the printed cards
of the Library of Congress flowed into the repertory.' n There
they joined entries taken from the catalogs of the British Museum,
the last volumes of which had appeared in 1899, from
that of France's Bibliotheque Nationale, the printing of which
was begun in 1901, from that of the Konigliche Bibliothek in
Berlin, begun in 1908, and from the Catalogo generate delta
Libraria Italiana. The IIB also received as a gift the printed
accession lists of the British Museum after 1899 to the War.
In return, the IIB sent off (as it did to the Library of Congress)
copies of its own publications. In 1910 Clement
Andrews, Chief librarian of the famous scientific and technical
John Crerar Library in Chicago, made an exchange agreement
with Otlet by which, in return for a corpus of Belgian
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