THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

that the supplements issued to the CD showed them as originating
from «The International Institute of Documentation,
the Hague» not Brussels. He noted, too, the conversations
which had occurred between Donker Duyvis and Pollard and
the League Committee of Library Experts, conversations which
had resulted in a report proposing to grant a subsidy to the
International Commission for the Decimal Classification, not
the IID (IIB). The management of the Classification had been
acknowledged to lie in the hands of this Commission and tobe
under the control of the Dutch, and the support of the
Dutch Government had been requested for it. In Germany the
situation was as bad or worse, in Otlet's view. The general
interests of the IIB had been so neglected by the German Ministerial
Commission for the Decimal Classification that «in
M. Walther's opinion, no one knows what the position of Germany
is with respect to the IIB»- Certainly, said Otlet, no one
had intervened in Germany to obtain a clear understanding
of the IIB's rights in the Decimal Classification there.
In all of this, Otlet now revealed explicitly how much he
distrusted and resented all the major changes that had taken
place in the Institute since 1924. He was equally disapproving
of the changes which had taken place through Donker Duyvis's
influence in the Decimal Classification itself. Donker Duyvis,.
he said, had rewritten the parts for science and technology
«according to hardly any principles or rules. Upon a request
for an indication of the rules followed, he had replied: the rules
will be determined when it is finished*. Otlet was indignant
that
many profound ... modifications had been made, destroying the stability
which is an absolute desideratum at the base of the system ...
New propositions continue to be made in little bits, division by
division, with no indication of reasons, rapid reply being demanded
on the propositions with only a few days interval. .. Collaborators
are not guided by instructions and they change, add and modify
without rhyme or reason... No appeal is made to the international
organisations . .. There is no central document upon which efforts can
be fixed with respect to Dewey. .. The CD is modified without any
assurance that DC will be.
Otlet was very discouraged by all this. He thought he
would stay at home in Brussels and not go to the Frankfurt
conference in August where there was sure to be unpleasantness.
But he declared that he «categorically refused* to accept
the principles according to which the Institute's affairs appeared
now to be conducted. The real source of all the trouble,
he belived, was «the double betrayal* that he and La Fontaine
had suffered:
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that of the Belgian Government at the time of expulsion in 1923—1924,
and that of the League of Nations at that same important moment
when the Committee and the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation had"
been created according to the circumstances of that time. At that