THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

The conference pressed with almost breakneck speed upon
the invitations to it. In the normal course of events, such a
conference would have been given wide publicity, and the learned
world would have been able to take its time in considering
the issues raised before preparing to attend. That there was
not enough time between invitation and conference for delegates
either from England, so near at hand, or from the United
States to make arrangements for the journey to Brussels, and
that others from Italy and France felt harried and rushed,,
created some suspicion of Otlet and La Fontaine's bibliographic
enterprise that it took time to dispel. 24
There was, however, good reason for haste. A movement
was gathering force in the Royal Society of London to undertake
a venture of international bibliography similar to their
own. For more than 30 years the Royal Society of London had
been issuing its Catalogue of Scientific Papers. Increasing in
size with every year, only meagerly subsidised by the government,
still lacking the subject index that it had been hoped
could one day be provided for it but which was becoming ever
more difficult and expensive to compile, the Catalogue at last
became a burden too great for the resources of the Society. In
1893 the Council of the Society appointed a special committee
to investigate ways of continuing the Catalogue by means of
international co-operation. Having received favourable answers
to a circular addressed to scientists and scientific bodies
throughout the world, the committee recommended, in a report
dated June 1895, that the Council call an international conference
in July 1896 «with the view of discussing and settling
a detailed scheme for the production by international cooperation
of complete author and subject catalogues of scientific
literature*. 25
As the time of year for such gatherings in Europe is the
summer months, had Otlet and La Fontaine wished to give more
notice of their intention to call an international conference of
bibliography, they would have had to hold it at approximately
the same time as the International Conference on a Catalogue
of Scientific Literature was meeting in London. They could not
hope to compete with the Royal Society in any way — an organisation
then, as it is now, of unassailable authority and prestige.
The assembly it was sponsoring was to be called by the
British government as a conference of governments with official
representation. The assembly at Brussels represented merely
a gathering of interested individuals under the benevolent
surveillance of the Belgian government. By holding their meeting
in 1895, Otlet and La Fontaine had a chance to establish
without competition the organisation they wished to see develop
their own venture, to obtain international appoval of it
and participation in it, and time to publicise any apparent
46