THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

vertised and promoted with a good deai of misguided and misguiding
zeal. Moreover, had the copying problem been solvable,
the idea of distributing copies of the whole or of parts
of the RBU, was suspect for yet another reason. The RBU, as
has been indicated,, was a bibliographical hybrid made rather
mechanically from a large variety of sources. Some of it represented
original bibliography; most of it was derivative and
one might seriously question the value of any ambitious distribution
programme for it. This was equally true of the preparation
and distribution of current material added to the RBU.
Either it must involve secondary sources, and therefore constituted
only bibliography made from bibliographies which were
readily available to others, or it constituted original bibliography
compiled from actual substantive publications. By
the device of the Bibliographia Universalis original current
periodical bibliography for which OIB might have become responsible
was decentralised and placed outside its control with
only the loosest agreements, when they actually existed, governing
form of entry and presentation. There were a number of
exceptions, the primary bibligraphies published by the OIB
or closely supervised by it: the Bibliographia Bibliographica
(compiled by La Fontaine), the Bibliographie de Belgique
(edited at the OIB), the Bibliographia Economica Universalis
(compiled by La Fontaine and Louis Masure), and Vermandel's
Bibliographia Technica published in Revue de I'ingenieur
et de la presse technique (revised and classified at the OIB).
rent periodical bibliographies undertaken at the Office.
These may be considered the only effective publication of cur-
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SUPPLY AGENCY
Subscribers to the Contributions to the Bibliographia Universalis
were expected to cut up each issue into entries and
paste each entry on a card of standard size arranged according
to the divisions of the Universal Decimal Classification in
standard catalog furniture. Cards of various shapes and
colours were to be used to indicate various kinds of divisions
in the classified arrangement of the entry cards. It is not surprising,
therefore, that at the very outset, the OIB should undertake
to become an agent for bibliographical equipment and
supplies. In 1895 when work began on the Universal Repertory,
Otlet and La Fontaine examined very carefully the problem
of getting equipment and supplies for it. They had corresponded
at length with Cedric Chivers about weights and
colours of various kinds of cards and card stock and catalog
furniture and their relative cost. Otlet had hoped that an arrangement
might be worked out for the Library Bureau to supply
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