THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

International Congress of Physiology. This had been brought
before a meeting of that Congress also in 1895. Some of the
provisions of this latter proposal were in their turn adoptions
of citation rules devised by Herbert Haviland Field and the
International Congress of Zoology for the Concilium Bibliographicum.
27 Aspects of international bibliographical standardisation
were, it can be seen, on the order of the day of a
number of scientific congresses of the time.
Representatives of the French Association for the Advancement
of Sciences carried the Association's resolutions for
preparing titles of scientific papers to Brussels to the International
Conference of Bibliography for adoption. 28 Gratified
by the favourable response they had received in Brussels,
they came away enthusiasts for the Decimal Classification and
the plans of Otlet and La Fontaine for the Institute of
Bibliography. Distinguished,, well-connected scientists all,
they soon broke into print with accounts of the conference and
the events arising from it, behind many of which lay their own
energetic attempts to be of practical assistance to the new
Institute.
Charles Richet 29 decided that all the articles appearing in
the Revue scientifique, which he edited, from the beginning of
1896 would bear a decimal classification number. He admitted
that the classification was not perfect, but
it is impossible to imagine one which would please all the world —
but that of Dewey has the incomparable advantage that it exists, that
it is used, that it serves to classify in America more than 10 million
volumes, and that if one wanted to substitute another for it,
which would run the risk of not being better, it would not be followed.
30
Richet foresaw that, after a few years, the classification would
•become widely used «and we are anxious to be the first to
apply it in Europe after Messrs. La Fontaine and Otlet». 31
A few months after these observations were made, he returned
^gain to the defence of the Decimal Classification and summarised
his position thus:
1. An international bibliographic classification is necessary.
2. Such a classification should be at once alphabetical by authors'
names, and analytical by subjects treated.
3. Any analytical classification can be made only in an international
language, and the only universal international language one could
adopt is the language of numbers, consequently a numerical classification,
which implies, clearly, the adoption of a decimal arrangement.
4. Any analytical classification can only be artificial; it is absolutely
chimerical to hope for a definitive, integrated and faultless classification
of all human knowledge.
5. The Dewey system in use for a long time, and having been tested
from a practical point of view, can by successive additions very
well become an easy, commodious, and general classification.