THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

the Belgian Senate as a Socialist member, was politically suspect
and was excluded from the government of the Office. 33
The results of the International Conference of Bibliography
must have been gratifying to Otlet and La Fontaine. The International
Institute of Bibliography was founded. The creation
of a universal bibliographic repertory and the adoption
and development of the Decimal Classification were approved.
The International Office of Bibliography was placed under the
aegis of the Belgian government and was assured of permanent
support within its Department of the Interior and Public
Instruction. It is true that this created some confusion, for
the functions of the Office formally included those of the Institute.
The original notion recommended by Otlet and La Fontaine,
resolved upon by the Conference, and reported to the
King by the Minister, of a documentary union of governments
with the International Office of Bibliography as its permanent
bureau, was lost sight of for the time being. No doubt that
seemed of little importance at the time. It would have been
pessimistic to anticipate conflict between the bureau of the
Institute, an international organisation, and that of the Office,
a national one, for while the inter-governmental treaties were
lacking, neither the Institute nor the Office, as private international
organisations, had any identity under Belgian law.
The Office on the other hand, by virtue of its Royal Decree
being both local and governmental, could assume a protected
and responsible legal existence. In any case Otlet was the dominant
figure in both organisations and La Fontaine was soon
drawn into the formal administration of the Office by the creation
of the position of Director, a staff position requiring only
ministerial approval rather than the more formal approval by
the King.
WORK BEGINS
The tasks confronting the two friends after the Conference
of 1895 were prodigious. But there was already a basis for
giving the OIB a satisfactory institutional shape. In the years
before the Conference, the Office had been set up first in La
Fontaine's study and then in the Hotel Ravenstein. A group of
collaborators had assisted Otlet and La Fontaine with the
development of the bibliographical repertory for law and sociology,
classified so hastily according to the Decimal system
for the Conference. This repertory was housed in specially des
igned catalog furniture which, in a sense, constituted a foundation
for the physical existence of the Office. Yet there was
something tentative about it before the Conference. Its work appears
to have been primarily focused upon its published bib-
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