THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

clearly and exactly.» Alingh Prins ended on a conciliatory
note:
Please be convinced, my dear Mm Otlet and La Fontaine, that I have
the greatest desire to put an end to these mis-understandings, and
that I desire that we should collaborate together in the common goal
in a spirit of friendship and mutual understanding. 87
Donker Duyvis was shaken by Otlet's letter and spoke out
strongly. The last edition of the Classification, he said, contained
only a little borrowed from Dewey. The rest of it was
the result of the work in Europe of a great many collaborators.
«In asking for the co-operation of collaborators, I requested
them to contribute their work to the International Committee
for the Decimal Classification which acted as the representative
committee of the IIB after the regulations laid down
in 1924.» All the collaborators had worked without any claim
to copyright. He renounced any such claims himself and regretted,
rather tartly, that such claims were being made «for
an institution of the Belgian Government of which I know little
more than the name and with which neither any of the collaborators
nor I myself have had any relation*. He observed that
the work of many of his collaborators was often «mutilated to
force it into the superannuated scheme of Dewey». It would
be only a little trouble to abandon the whole scheme and set
about devising a «universal classification responding more to
modern needs (particularly we wants to overturn sections 1 to
4)», the sections in the new edition, for which Otlet and La
Fontaine had been responsible. But Donker Duyvis did not
want this to happen. «It is therefore with the greatest insistence
that I beg you not to mutilate the existing organisation —
an organisation founded by you — in which you have co-operated
and acted as the co-directors since its foundation
in 1924.» 88
Otlet, however, continued to believe that the Dutch had
attempted to separate the Office and the Institute and to bear
-a strong resentment towards them. He continued to refuse to
accept the various changes that had occurred in the Institute
over the preceding years. On Boxing Day 1932, he drew up
a report «On the Present Situation of the IID» which he
wanted to submit to the Council and members of the Institute.
It set out all the grievances mentioned in his earlier report
to La Fontaine in July and added to them his opinions on what
had happened at the Frankfurt Conference and subsequently. 89
On the 28th and 29th December Donker Duyvis and Alingh
Prins came down to Brussels from The Hague and Otlet read
his draft report to them. They discussed it and they came to
an agreement which Otlet drew up formally. Important provisions
of the agreement were to reinstate the RBU as an
-«integral part of the international organisation of documen-
-336