THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

On the other hand ... it is doubtless true that decided improvements
can be made in the original when under expert advice ... Messrs. La
Fontaine and Otlet of the International Bibliographical Office, have
certainly brought forward an interesting subject, and we trust it
may be taken up internationally and thoroughly worked out. 4
On the whole the Royal Society was not much impressed.
The invitation for a representative from the Society to attend
the conference had come too late for it to be acted on in
sufficient time. Not long after the conference ended, however,
the Society's Senior Secretary had been able to visit Brussels
to look over what the Institute had begun to do there. He
noted «the skill and zeal with which the preliminary preparations
have been made to carry the work into execution.» 5 But
in the opinion of Lord Kelvin, the President of the Society,
while the energy and enterprise which had been displayed in
Belgium were to be admired, the Royal Society should not be
deterred from attempting to carry out its own bibliographic
program. «It is impossible», he observed, «to overrate the
difficulties* connected with the Brussels venture and concluded
that «to avoid unnecessary complication in the future, it is
essential that very many questions — especially the division
of the subject matter in the various branches of science and
the nomenclature to be used — be taken into consideration by
competent bodies and settled by general agreement*. 6
In Europe, however, comment was not lukewarm or
criticism a decorous damning by faint praise. Eminent European
bibliographers and librarians, especially in France, rose
up as one man in elegant tumult against the Belgians. A Universal
Bibliographic Repertory would, no doubt, said Louis
Polain, 7 be useful. But «we consider the manner in which
the authors of the project have proceeded to be very defective».
8 He objected to the idea of cutting up existing printed
catalogs, and he objected emphatically to the Decimal
Classification which «far from helping searching, rebuffs the
reader». 9 He was by no means convinced that Otlet and La
Fontaine had avoided, as they claimed, the faults of traditional
arrangements of bibliographic material such as by the
alphabet or by the system of Brunet. The Decimal Classification
had a strong American bias and in many places was illogical
and arbitrary. «The whole of Europe occupies one of the subdivisions
of the group 9 History with no distinction of period
or country, but North America and South America each have
one. Isn't that really ridiculous?* 10
The initial reaction of Henri Stein 11 to the Belgian scheme
was extremely hostile and he grew increasingly vituperative
about it as the years passed. 12 Eventually he denounced «the
perfect inanity and actual uselessness» of the «grandiose and
rather temeritous projects* of the two Belgian bibliographers.
13 For Stein, «not only is it indispensable that bibliog-
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