THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

1. Code of rules for administrative documentation;
2. Schemas and diagrams as a means for graphically representing
accounting phenomena and of characterising the mechanism of
accounts and their functions;
3. The creation of a Central Office of Documentation in Matters
Relating to Accountancy.^0
A «Code» for accountancy was drawn up, presumably at the
TIB, to fulfil the requirements laid down in 1910. Its sections
were closely related to the «Code for the Organisation of Administrative
Documentation*, now given the acronym CODA.
In many instances references were made to sections of the
CODA without supporting text although the sections on accountancy
and the value of the Decimal Classification in administrative
documentation were substantive and to some extent
new. 41 Otlet's interest in accountancy continued. He was made
President of the Belgian Academic Society for Accountancy later
in 1910, and continued for some years to be one of the Belgian
representatives on the Council of the International Association
for Accountancy which had been set up in 1910. This
was formally affiliated with the IIB. Indeed, a note to this
effect appeared on the Association's letter head as late as
1927. 42
For Otlet and La Fontaine, however, this year of conferences
culminated in that for bibliography and documentation
held from the 25th to the 27th August 1910. In the preliminary
documents prepared for the International Congress of Bibliography
and Documentation, as it was now called, what was
to be a permanent program for future meetings was set out.
This referred explicitly to the work of other congresses having
some interest in elements of bibliography and documentation:
those of publishers, librarians and archivists, and those
for copyright, for photography and for the administrative
sciences. The International Congress for Bibliography and Documentation
would not encroach on any special interests:
It will try to co-ordinate their achievement according to the desiderata
of the general organisation which must be given documentation, an
organisation permitting more methodical production of books, more
orderly collection of them, more complete cataloging of them, the integration
of their elements into more systematic assemblages, their
more extended use. 43
The specific program of the 1910 Congress dealt with four
major areas of study: the present state of bibliographical organisation
throughout the world, the problems and possibilities
of co-operation and co-ordination of documentary work,
the problems particularly associated with an international
cataloging code and the Decimal Classification, and finally, the
•organisation of an international documentary union. 44
The documents of the congress were many and diverse.
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