THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

(tography in August 1896. As a result of their participation at
the Congress, the Union joined the Institute and adopted in
principle the tables of the Decimal Classification for photography
which had been prepared by Louis Stanier, an attache
at the Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique in Brussels and J. Vallot
of the Musee de Documentation Photographique in Paris.
•General Sebert, for whom photography was an absorbing interest,
became the French member of the Permanent International
Commission of the Union. 60
By 1897 the progress of the Institute was impressive. Its
second conference was held in August that year in Brussels.
Charles Ami Cutter presented a paper on his Expansile
Classification to the conference. Inevitably the Decimal Classification
came up for debate and an impressive array of figures
rose to support it, including Clement Andrews, the Librarian
of the John Crerar Library in Chicago. Two years before, the
Classification had been virtually unknown in Europe. Three
important resolutions were taken by the conference. First, it
was resolved that the Institute should appoint a commission
of specialists from «various countries for the purpose of establishing
an international code of rules for forming bibliographical
notices». Second, that it should appoint another
commission to study «the most practical and economical method
of printing cards». The third resolution recognised «the usefulness
of forming national branches within the International
Institute of Bibliography». These resolutions show the Institute
beginning to grapple with quite practical problems of international
co-operation both in terms of input to the RBU (rules
for forming bibliographic notices) and output from it (printing
cards from it for distribution). The third resolution involved
both notions though its implications were not explored by
Otlet until a number of years later. 62
This second conference of the IIB had been postponed
from 1896 to 1897 for two reasons. On the one hand, it was
thought that a meeting in London of the Royal Society's Conference
which was to be held in 1896, and one involving many
of the same figures in Brussels shortly afterwards, would be
needlessly repetitive. 63 On the other, by arranging the Conference
in 1897, Otlet and La Fontaine were able to seize the
opportunity of participating in and exploiting a large international
exposition held in Brussels that year. 64 Otlet, La Fontaine
and Van der Haeghen, Librarian of the University of
Ghent organised a class, Bibliography, in the section
of the exposition for the sciences. A letter of invitation to
exhibit went out from them to members of the bibliographic
and library worlds. The participants in the IIB's conference
repaired to the exposition as well as to the installations of
the OIB and at both they were given guided tours and all the
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