THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

of the Association for the Museum being dissolved and a similar
association not being constituted, the collections will go to the IIBor,
in default, to the Belgian state with the obligation that they be
maintained. 86
The Museum was duly created and became so busy with
material for incorporation into its collections that Otlet wrote
to its President that «our personnel cannot devote all the
time desirable to integrate the specimens into the collections
which grow more and more». He hoped that the Museum's
Council might «judge it opportune to create a post of Assistant
Keeper of the Newspaper Museum». The Museum continued
to be extremely active until the War and some attempt was
made to continue it after the war. Its immense collection of
specimens, still largely intact at the Mundaneum, have in:
recent years been heavily used by scholars interested in the
bibliography of periodicals and newspapers of the period. 87 "
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF BIBLIOGRAPHY
AND DOCUMENTATION, 1908
There had been no official conference, no general shareholders'
meeting so to speak, of the IIB since 1900, despite alt
the activity that had taken place in its affairs since then. Acceding
to requests from foreign members, Otlet agreed to call
a meeting in 1908. He expressed some reluctance to do this..
The next international exposition in Belgium after that of Liege
in 1905 was to be held in Brussels in 1910. It was planned
to hold a conference then. This conference would thus come
exactly ten years after the highly successful Paris Conference
of 1900, ten years full af achievement. The goal of the 1910
Conference, it was hoped, would be the conclusion of a documentary
union of governments, the assurance «to our work»,
wrote Otlet to Baron Descamps asking him to preside at the
1908 conference, «of the official consecration of states». 88 He
recognised, however, that a preliminary meeting might be useful
in establishing a firm basis upon which to reach up towards
official recognition and status. The Conference was,,
therefore, called not only to discuss the present state of bibliographical
organisation, which was a general aim of all the IIB
Conferences, but
its immediate aim was to investigate the means of creating an International
Documentation Organisation and thus lay the foundations
of a permanent International Congress and of an International Union:
between the different states. 89
A number of documents were prepared at the Institute for
the conference. A draft of proposed statutes for the new union,
naturally, was among them. Another important document was
a «Report on the IIB and the Systematic Organisation of Do-
158