THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

In Europe, Alingh Prins and others had become suspicious of
ihe unrealistic scope of Otlet's program, they had learned
to distrust the RBU and the information service based on it.
They were exasperated by the inefficiency of the Headquarters
Office in the Palais Mondial. They turned towards concrete,
practical matters of getting the Institute functioning on a
•secure financial and administrative basis and performing
limited but obviously useful work.
CRISIS
By July 1932 Otlet had become convinced that the crisis
he had foreseen was upon the Institute. He addressed to La
Fontaine a «note» setting out what he believed had happened.
There were some general facts to which he first drew La Fontaine's
attention.
A. Technical groups in various countries are being asked to form
national sections when the sections should represent all the forces of
documentation.
B. There has been a tendency to put the spotlight on the Decimal Classification,
one of the elements of the Institute, and leave in shadow or
silence the other elements, notably the Bibliographia Universalis and
the Universal Bibliographic Repertory on cards.
C. The original plan of obtaining official aid from governments for
the central Institute is being departed from.
D. The program arrived at or in the process of being arrived at with
the League of Nations had not been taken up again on an enlarged
basis, and the signed convention has been abandoned.
E. All the importance desired has not been given to the participation
of the special international associations.
F. No consideration at all (on the contrary) has been given to the
fact that the IIB is one of the institutes installed in the Palais Mondial,
is able to give support to this (the Mundaneum) and can receive
valuable help from it. 68
Apart from these general points, Otlet had a great many particular
grievances. The Dutch, he alleged, had shown constant
suspicion of the founders of the IIB, and their intervention had
led indirectly to «the paralysis of action at the Centre* in
Brussels. Donker Duyvis had been made a third Secretary-General
in 1928 without prior warning — an action of open distrust
of the General Secretariat as it was then constituted. The
1930 Conference had been held in Zurich when it should have
been held at Brussels because 1930 was an anniversary year
for the Institute (and, of course, for Belgium). The 1931 Conference
had been held at The Hague, once more passing Brussels
by. The 1932 Conference was to be held in Frankfurt.
Moreover, there had been interference from Holland in the
IIB Bulletin in its new form as Documentatio Universalis, and
there was talk of confiding its publication to the Czechoslovakian
section. (It was actually transferred to Nider and was
edited by G. A. A. de Voogd under the title IID Communi-
•cationes in 1933.) Something else which rankled was the fact
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