THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

national bibliography. He made it clear that he had no confidence
in the American proposals for rescuing and supporting
the IIB. The American Library Association, in his view, had
had no experience of running a bibliographic venture on the
scale of the Brussels Repertory. He also disagreed with the
proposal that it be moved to Geneva for there it would be
too distant from most centers of scnce and industry. The
solution to all of these difficulties, he concluded, was for the
Repertory to be taken over by the Science Museum where there
was a staff both scientifically and bibliographically experienced
and where the Repertory could be maintained at a cost
of no more that 2,000 per annum. As the same systems were
used in the Museum and in Brussels all that was needed was
a comparatively small increase of the organisation we have already
established .. .
If it should be possible to secure this enormous bibliography, containing,
as it does, a wealth of references on all branches of economics
as well as science and technology, merely for the cost of upkeep,
it should be a coup. 17
Bradford then revealed that Donker Duyvis acquiesced
in these views. Indeed, Donker Duyvis had himself written
to the Institute in Paris informing de Vos Van Steenwijk that
most useful to it in place of the entire Repertory which the
English, Dutch and German sections. «The personality of
M. Otlet had not much importance in the practical work». He
suggested that if the current agreement between the League
and the IIB was unsatisfactory, it should be abandoned
forthwith and a new one worked out in conjunction with
Pollard, La Fontaine and himself. 18
The Dutch proposal at the Cologne Conference to «decentralise»
the Repertory was, in fact, a political ploy to secure
for the Science Museum in London that part of the Repertory
most useful to it in place of the entire Repertory which the
Conference, following Otlet's proposal, wished to see transferred
to Geneva. The practical effects of the manoeuvre were
probably minimal. Certainly no cards appear to have been
transferred from Brussels though, no doubt, collaborators sent
both new material and requests for information henceforth
to London.
There was no immediate action at the League either as
a result of Bradford's intervention. Murray communicated his
letters to the Secretariat in Geneva and they went thence to
the Institute in Paris. It was decided quite emphatically to
continue to wait for the views of the Sub-Committee on
Bibliography on a new approach to the IIB. Indeed, it was
clear that in the Secretariat it was a case of «once bitten
twice shy», and Murray was informed of this in no uncertain
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