THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

a series of fifteen lectures on the subject, and, as he wrote
to Geddes in 1925, having delivered the series three times he
would like to deliver it yet a fourth. It is necessary, he
explained «to go over the same ideas, to deepen them, to
classify them better, to correlate them, to find a more lively
expression for them, to simplify their presentation, and above
all to make them less 'local'». 87 He published an outline of
the arrangement of subjects in and visual material available
on «the Encyclopedia and Synthesis of Knowledge* for which
he was working. 88 He embarked on a program of using
microfilm to make available the results of synthetic activity
in the Mundaneum. «For the diffusion of the works and
collection of the Center, two collections*, he announced, «have
been begun simultaneously. The first is in microscopic format
(14X 18 mms.), Encyclopedia Microphotica Mundaneum. The
second is in chart format (64X67 cms.), Encyclopedia Universalis
Atlas Mundaneum...». 89 Ten years later hundreds of
microfilms and a great many charts were available for
purchase on all kinds of subjects related to the collections
of the Mundaneum. 90
THE LAST QUINZAINE INTERNATIONALE
One particular preoccupation of Otlet's in 1926 was the
idea of holding another Quinzaine Internationale in 1927 at
the Mundaneum. Perhaps he hoped to reawaken the interest
that had greeted this venture on its first appearance in 1921,
and to catch up on the support lost between 1924 and 1927.
Conferences of the IIB, the UIA and the International University
were scheduled for the period between the 17th and
the 30th July 1927. 91 The scale of activity of the Conferences
and the session of the University was much reduced, however,
and the Quinzaine produced nothing new for any of the three
organisations. Discussions and resolutions were similar to
those of previous Conferences, except that the repetition and
the evidence surrounding the participants of ineffectuality,
must have made them seem rather hollow. Indeed, there was
something emptily repetitive about the whole venture and it
marked the last session of Otlet's International University
and the end of the UIA, which held no further international
conferences. Otlet continued to publish occasionally in the
name of the UIA; meetings of representatives of the Associations
with offices at the Mundaneum continued to be held;
and Otlet persisted in attempting to maintain the Mundaneum,
which had originated as the UlA's international center,
until his death. But effectively, the UIA had become moribund
in 1927. It was revived after the Second World War and,
297'