THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

not the International Institute [for Bibliography] meanwhile
grown up». The mobilisation of forces within the Institute's
national sections and much arduous work at the Congress
itself were necessary to avoid defeat. «At every meeting»,
Bradford reports, resolutions were proposed in favour of
[Gerard's] plan» and «at first the members of the Institute
were, every time, outvoted*. Eventually, however, «knowledge,
experience and logic made their mark», and with a change
in name which emphasised the decentralised «federalised»
nature of the organisation, the Congress voted to support it
and not proceed with Gerard's proposal. 46
Otlet, however, did not share Bradford's view of the
Congress. He was pleased that it recognised the need for a
Universal Network for Documentation and saw this aspect of
its work as recapitulating his own ideas.
It is indeed paradoxical that libraries and archival repositories preserve
large masses of documents without having the resources to catalog,
analyse and circulate them; that offices and services of Documentation
establish vast repertories without power of themselves disposing of
(actual) works; that learned and administrative bodies publish them
without full co-ordination or care for their utilisation; that provincial
workers in all countries are deprived of the means of study. The
Universal Network of Documentation is called on to organise the
liason of these reservoirs and repertories, of producers and users.
The ultimate goal is to realise the World Encyclopedia according to
the needs of the twentieth century. 47
The most important result of the Congress for him was
its demand to know the intentions of the new Belgian Cabinet
to the Palais Mondial. He interpreted the Congress's deliberations
as «posing imperiously the question of a Central
Headquarters. Can Belgium*, he asked, «continue to be the
Headquarters, or must other steps be taken?» He recounted
the facts of the absence of official Belgian representation at
the Congress, and the «painful duty» imposed upon him of
having to explain «the attitude of the Government brutally
closing the Palais Mondial in 1934». He expressed a fear of
the German influence at the Congress— 18 delegates directed
by a «Fuhrer». 58 No world gathering could be without political
overtones, he observed, and every attempt shoudl be made
to maintain the increasingly tenuous contacts between nations.
With the British Empire, the Pan-American Union, Russia,
Asia and a Fascist bloc in Europe, the world was threatened
by disintegration. In Europe tensions had grown to such a
point that «Europe is no more than a word». These observations
served to highlight for him the need to reopen the
Palais Mondial with the utmost dispatch. It was urgent that
the Belgian government should make its attitude clear. The
three years of closure, of battles to secure the Palais
Mondial's future, were, he claimed, also three years of prepa-
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