THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

"first meeting in August 1922. In it he described the origins
of the Committee in the various proposals of the UIA during
the War. He repeated what the UIA had suggested should
be both the general and the specific duties of the League in
the realm of intellectual work. He recommended as particular
problems requiring immediate solutions the development and
improvement of the international organisation of scientific
research, the relations governing the exchange of professors
and students between universities, and the international organisation
of bibliography, matters with which the Committee,
in fact, immediately involved itself. Otlet's note to the Committee,
however, emphasised his belief that a grand and far-reaching
design, along the lines already set down by him in
many places, should guide the work of the Committee. He
made a point of stressing the need for a centralised system
of organisation for regulating the relations between the
Committee and the nations, arguing that this was the most
economic and effective way of securing good communication
and co-operation. He described as the sort of permanent
international centre the Committee would need to develop,
the Palais Mondial in Brussels, powerful testimony to the
importance of which, he reminded his readers, Gilbert Murray
had given in the General Assembly the year before.
The Committee's first meeting touched on a great many
of the issues of interest to Otlet. Destree had placed on the
agenda the matter of a permanent international center. He
also suggested that an International University should be
created under the auspices of the League. Another member
of the Committee raised the matter of an International Library
growing from material flowing into it through the adoption
of international deposit regulations. The most important issue
before the Committee, in its view, however, was the international
organisation of bibliography. The work of the International
Institute of Bibliography was described and praised
by Destree. Others suggested the need for a uniform classification,
though G. de Reynold, Professor of French Literature
at Berne University and rapporteur for the Committee, believed
the «decimal system» was imperfect because of lacunae.
The idea that bibliography should be placed under the aegis
of the International Research Council was discussed and so
was the need to consult librarians, bibliographers and technical
experts before any decisions about bibliography should be
taken. A distinction was made between retrospective bibliography
and current bibliography, the needs of the latter being
strongly related, it was thought, to the development of
adequate abstracting services. On the whole it was agreed that
«questions of documentation and bibliography were extremely
complicated because of their technical nature». The diverse
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