THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

Chapter
IV
INTERNATIONAL REACTIONS
AND EARLY DEVELOPMENTS
MAINLY EUROPEAN BIBLIOGRAPHERS
The International reaction to the Conference was considerable.
The participants in the conference, thirty, forty or
fifty of them according to different reporters went back to
their various countries, and were soon followed by the early
publication of the IIB—OIB — the French tables for sociology
of the Decimal Classification, the first fascicule of the
Institute's Bulletin, and the first bibliographies. By the end
of 1896 nearly 70 reviews of the conference and of these publications
had appeared in an enormous variety of popular
trade, literary and scientific periodicals issued in France,
England, America, Germany, Spain and Belgium. 1 Some
reviews were simply informative. In others, partizans, adversaries
and sceptics declared themselves in no uncertain terms.
In England, as in America, there was little passion. The
news that an International Office and Institute of Bibliography
had been launched was accorded a polite but cursory attention.
The Athenaeum for example, expressed admiration for
the extent and variety of the accomplishments of the conference
of bibliography, but concluded that the classification by
the Decimal system of nearly half a million notices upon which
the convenors of the conference had labored indicated that the
undertaking was «far too large for private enterprise, or even
for a society: and . . . cannot hope of success without the practical
adhesion of the various governments*. 2 This view was
also held in the United States, where the whole venture was
seen as something quite European and very far away. 3
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We are not fully informed whether the international bibliographic
conference which met recently at Brussels is entitled to so large a
name, or is, perhaps, the development of a private scheme... The value
of an international scheme is, of course, in its uniformity... The system
as perfected by Mr. Dewey is so widely in use in this country that
it would be difficult to conform to a new version at this late date.