THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

C h a p t e r
X I V
LAST DECADES
THE MUNDANEUM
During the latter part of the 1920s and the early 1930s-
Otlet was by no means solely occupied with developments in
the International Institute of Documentation, as the last
chapter may have suggested. His main activities, on the contrary,
were firmly directed towards the Mundaneum. The Mundaneum
was the expression of his philosophy and he devised
and carried out a program of work using and expanding its
collections in an attempt to realise its educational potential.
Within it he studied, lectured and wrote.
In the late twenties, after Masure's death, he attracted,
perhaps unexpectedly for he had feared he would not be able
to replace Masure, two new colleagues to work with him, two
disciples, Georges Lorphevre, then a very young man, and the
older Andre Colet. Moreover, after the closure of the Palais
Mondial in 1924, a group of supporters joined together to form
a non-profit association designed to help in its reconstruction
and subsequent development along the lines of Otlet's
theories. This association called itself Les Amis du
Palais Mondial. Its members were a corps of volunteers
replacing the paid assistants of earlier more prosperous days.
The program of the Mundaneum, both social and educational,
was directed primarily at them, and notices about it.
appeared in an information bulletin, Palais Mondial, issued
from the Mundaneum regularly between 1929 and 1932.
During the period 1927 to 1930 a cycle of lectures andother
activities was held. In 1930 another triennial cycle began.
It was described in the following way:
It [the triennial cycle] constitutes an important form of instruction
with a special character: the complement, preparation for, or repetition
of general and specialised instruction given before. It is distinguished
by three characteristics:
1 This instruction in all its parts is dominated by a central idea: to
make known the general life of the world under the form of its
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