THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

cumentation». 90 This and a further report by Otlet and La Fontaine
on the «Present State of Bibliographical Questions and the
Systematic Organisation of Documentation* which Otlet read
at the conference were extremely important in providing a
rationalisation for all that had been happening within the Office
and the Institute. The preliminary «Report on the IIB» is
particularly interesting because it defined «document»,
«documentation» and «documentary method» quite explicitly.
Over the years these words had taken on added, even new,.
meaning as used by Otlet. A document was to be considered as
anything «which expressed or represented by means of any
graphic signs whatever (writing, picture, schema, numbers,
symbols) an object, fact, idea or impression. Printed texts
(books, periodicals, newspapers) are the most numerous category
to-day». The documentary method was a means of bringing
documents together in such a way that they could easily
yield up the information they contained and must be regarded
as a necessary complement of other methods of investigation
such as observation or experimentation. By «Documentation»
was meant «the bringing together and co-ordination of isolated
documents in such a way as to create integrated wholes».
The «Report» distinguished between various kinds of documents
and various forms of documentation. The latter involved
bibliography («list or inventory of existing publications*),
librarianship, iconography («collections of prints, designs,
photographs...»), documentary dossiers and documentary publications.
The systematic organisation of documentation, involving
the development of the RBU) and to their analysis and
ry of «integrated information*. Any international organisation
for documentation that was to be set up would need to be
universal in its approach to the listing of documents (involving
the development of the RBU) and to their analysis and
summarising (involving the Encyclopedic Repertory of Dossiers).
It would need, also, to cover all countries «in a vast network
of documentation services, established in all the great
centers by autonomous groups... adhering to a common plan
and realising it according to common methods*. 91 A great,
powerful, international center would need to be at the head of
the network as the source of its vitality, an institute which
would be «an emanation and representation of the autonomous
groups*. The institute would organise and co-ordinate the
outlying centers. In consultation with them it would decide
upon programs for them, would protect and develop accepted
methods, and above all, would maintain centrally prototype
repertories. This was to be the role, the future, of the International
Institute of Bibliography.
With this and a number of other documents before them,
delegates from various countries assembled in Brussels in July
159