THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

their informal participation, Otlet believed, could have been
useful. Indeed, Otlet himself had been prevented from presenting
his annual report properly, even though, as he said «logic
and all precedent* suggested the propriety of reading it
and discussing it as the meeting's first business. Moreover,
Alingh Prins «in a most inelegant manner» had opposed the
tradition by which the Presidency was rotated amongst the
members of various countries.
Early in the year, Alingh Prins and Otlet had received
copies of two draft documents from the International Institute
for Intellectual Co-operation. One was a report by Jean Gerard
to the Committee of Library Experts on «the World Organisation
of Universal Documentation». 77 The other was a report
«On the Co-ordination of Scientific and Technical Documentation*
prepared within the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation
itself. Comments were solicited from IID officials together with
a brief account of the IID itself. The second document proposed
that a committee to co-ordinate the work of organisations
concerned with scientific and technical documentation should
be formed. The first document proposed, more sweepingly, that
an International Union for Documentation should be created.
It described some existing national organisations for documentation
but did not mention the IID or its program, though,
Gerard's report resembled very closely in manner and in its
recommendations various formulations of Otlet's on the same
subject.
Gerard was at Frankfurt and Otlet thought that an opportunity
was presented as a result for the «enlargement of the
organisation* of the IID along the lines suggested by Gerard.
Here, he thought, was the moment to lay the foundations
through the IID of the Union proposed by Gerard (and espoused
for so long by Otlet himself as a necessary element in the
international organisation of documentation). But nothing was
made of this opportunity because of the incomprehensible
attitude* of Alingh Prins. Moreover, the Secretary of the International
Institute for Intellectual Co-operation, D. Secretan,
who was conducting the Institute's enquiry into international
scientific and technical documentation, was also at Frankfurt.
His presence constituted in Otlet's eyes the final element necessary
for the secure establishment of the long-hoped-for
Union. But even though, as Otlet pointed out, the League of
Nations had signed a convention with the IIB giving the League
the right to have a delegate sit on Council, «the Dutch excluded*
the representative from its sessions. 78
It seems clear, however, that Otlet had either misinterpreted
what had taken place at the Conference, or had been
deliberately kept in the dark. Secretan had been fully briefed
before he went to Frankfurt as to what to'expect and what his
332