THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

ment could be done piecemeal by experts. Nor should it be
forgotten, he insisted, that the intellectual problems of indexing
were always present no matted what system was used
but the Decimal Classification with its index and tables could
give much assistance to an indexer by suggesting approaches
and relationships.
Otlet now developed his notions of what the Institute
should be like more clearly than before. Its aim, he believed,
should be sufficiently general to encompass both friends and
enemies of the Repertory and the Decimal Classification. It
should be «a sort of federation of distinct groups the union of
which is necessary: scholars, bibliographers, librarians and
publishers*. In many scientific fields international congresses
had set up sections for bibliography, but they had not been
co-ordinated. «In joining the Institute, as they have commenced
to do, they will constitute distinct scientific sections to which
the Statutes of the Institute, precise on this point, will give
extensive powers in the domain of their special questions.» w
Otlet's article, though it was published in the IIB Bulletin,
was by no means the confident performance of a preacher
haranguing the converted. It was calculated to provide explanation,
correction, amplification and encouragement for those
who had become interested but remained sceptical, ill-informed
but open to conviction, aware of controversy and confused
by it. On the whole he avoided the clever, sophistical replies
to which the misapprehensions and the superficialities of
his critics could easily have led him.
THE BEGINNINGS OF INTERNATIONAL ACTION
One reason Otlet and La Fontaine spent so little time in
the arena of public literary polemics immediately after the
founding of IIB was that they were too busy for them. The
Institute and the Office formally established, they began at
once to spend more and more time bringing pressure to bear
on friends and acquaintances well-connected in various specialised
associations and societies in order to rally these organisations
to the IIB so that they might undertake the development
of appropriate parts of the repertory and of the classification.
They became inveterate conference goers, and promoters and
recorders of bibliographic resolutions, and they were successful.
Towards the end of 1895 the Bureau of the Office of
Bibliography was invited to the headquarters of the Royal
Society in London to explain what was afoot in Brussels. 47
Herbert Haviiand Field put the Concilium Bibliographicum in
correspondence with IIB, suggested the use of the standard
American 75x125 millimeter catalog card instead of the long
thin card adopted by the Conference of Bibliography and
68