THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

The Collective Library was in a sense part of a pattern of
structural elaboration within the OIB which involved thecreation
of new sections and new repertories. In 1905 an
International Institute of Photography was created as a new
section of the IIB. It grew out of an agreement between
Ernest de Potter, editor of the Revue beige de photographie,
and the OIB. The OIB undertook to develop the services and
collections of the Institute of Photography in its own locations.
De Potter agreed to donate, his collections, both photographic
and bibliographical, to the Institute and to undertake, a program
of extending them as much as possible, acting as
«Conservator of the Photographic Division of the International
Institute of Bibliography*' under its administrative controL
His was to be an honorary position until such , time, as the
OIB received an increased subsidy from the Belgian government
or support'from other governments.-The,OIB would.then
pay de Potter an annual sum of three thousand francs for a
period of ten years. 70 This agreement was put into effect. The
Institute was set up. An appeal for collaborators 1 was ; issued,,
and rules and procedures for carrying out its work were published.
The new Institute was to have several major functions.
First of all it was intended to promote the study of matters
relating to photographic documentation. But primarily the-
Institute was to create a Universal Iconographic Repertory
which was described as:
a general collection of pictures and documentary illustrations originating
from various sources on all subjects and classified. 71
At the time of the setting up of the Institute, there wereabout
100,000 pictures in stock, about 12,000 of which had
been mounted and classified. A specially prepared catalog
of them contained about 15,000 cards. The repertory consisted 1
of a main «documentary» repertory of actual pictorial material
which was classified by the Universal Decimal Classification
and housed in specially designed catalog furniture
and filing cabinets, and a number of auxiliary repertories. The
items were mounted where necessary on to sheets of one of
two standard sizes: ordinary postcard size (and much of the
material was in the form of postcards), and a larger size
(21.5X27.5 cm). Provision was made for miscellaneous material
of larger sizes in special folders. A rather complicated'
«bibliographic repertory*, an index, in effect, was then compiled
for this material. The index had three parts: a file in
accession order in which material was enregistered as received 1
and from which a unique number for each piece was derived;
a subject file; and finally, a file of authors and photographic
artists. The repertory grew steadily after its creation. Masure
gave statistics for its various parts in his report on- the IIB
153