THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

aim of the Belgians to have libraries exchange in its favour
classifications already in use. «One should not, I believe»,
he said, «accept lightly and without having submitted it to
rigorous and repeated proofs, a procedure that, by leading to
a radical change of affairs, would expose our old libraries
to a complete disorganisation. It is necessary, therefore, to
seek out the weaknesses of the Decimal Classification to ensure
that they do not outweigh its advantages.» 16 He found
what he sought. The classification, he observed, clearly lacked
proportion and its emphasis was too American. He examined
in some detail the sections in it for philology, the Roman
Catholic religious orders, biography and history, pointing out
the manifest inadequacies of each. In his second article, which
was never published and presumably never written, he proposed
to study the use to be made of the classification in Brussels.
Whatever the readers of the Journal des Savants may
have thought was implied by the failure of his second article
to appear, the supporters of the Belgian Institute were
heartily glad that it did not. 17 Elaborate pains were taken
thereafter by the Institute's staff to avoid any contact with
Delisle that might be thought to beard the lion in his den
artd shatter the golden silence of that second article. 18
Langlois, like the others, was critical of the Decimal
Classification. In his view, Otlet and La Fontaine were infatuated
with it and led by the nose by it. «They love the
Decimal Classification to the point of wanting to introduce
it everywhere*, 19 in libraries, in trade bibliographies,, even in
magazines, the articles of which should all be given their
own classification number. He considered it altogether unlikely
that governments could be persuaded to form a bibliographic
union, as the Belgians hoped, as had been done in
the case of the Postal Union, for example, and in many other
cases. Such agreement as these unions represented could be
negotiated only when there was imperious, demonstrable need.
«The states will hesitate to pledge themselves to indefinite
sacrifices for problematic returns.* 20 He thought it prudent
indeed that the conference of Brussels had set up its own
private Institute of Bibliography and had not waited for the
governments of the world to unite to do it.
Like Stein and Polain, Langlois was concerned that the
projected repertory would be just a list of titles. «It is possible,
indeed, by an effort of imagination, to conceive that a body
of very numerous employees and indexers, trained and maintained
by the Institute, could complete the formation of a
single repertory shaped in the mould of the Decimal Classification
out of all the printed catalogues of libraries, all the
old bibliographic collections and booktrade journals of all
countries.* 21 But it would be impossible for them to know
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