THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

een preferable: that is, 368.42:616.12. He did not pursue the
relative merits of this alternative. 36
«On the Structure of Classification Numbers* is a germinal
paper. In it Otlet can be seen to be groping towards a
form and a terminology for what later became the common and
analytical subdivisions. He had submitted the notions of Dewey
to a number of his collaborators, such as Carus and Baudouin,
for their opinion. In general in was thought the introduction
of letters would be useful. But the replies gave Otlet pause,
and this is reflected in his paper, for it was clear to him
that the specialists whom he had consulted were not much concerned
by the problems of the variation of numbers from science
to science and of multiple meanings which had become
clearly apparent to him from the proposals that they had in
turn made to him. He tried, therefore, to find solutions for
this problem. Nevertheless, it seems clear to a present-day observer
that the use of the parenthesis was bound to be troublesome.
Too much was demanded of it. The requirement that the
first figure of the number enclosed in parentheses should act
as a signal for the different categories of subject, time and place
was ominous with potential confusion, and so were the various
uses of superscripts that were contemplated. Moreover,
Otlet did not include a discussion of the form divisions and
«generalities» in this paper. These had sometimes appeared
with no parentheses as in the American Dewey, and some-
/times within parentheses. They too were derived from zero and
could be expected to provide all sorts of complication when set
with numbers for the other categories for which Otlet was
attempting to devise a characteristic notation.
Though the paper was tentative, it contained, nevertheless,
a clear statement of what Otlet hoped to be able to achieve
with the decimal notation and of the general principles which
guided his thinking. This statement suggested what little store
he set upon Carus's warning not to ask too much of the classification's
notation. His imagination seems to have been completely
captured by the notion of bibliographical analysis.
The Decimal Classification should constitute at one and the same
time a classification, and a bibliographic notation. As a classification
it should present a framework in which ideas are subordinated successively
and in different ways one to another according to whether
one assigns them to a principal rank or a secondary one. As a bibliographic
notation, it should become a veritable universal language
susceptible of interpreting by numbers grouped in factors with separate
and permanent meaning, all the nuances of ideologico-bibliographical
analysis. 37
The subsequent stages in the evolution of the classification
are well marked. In mid-1897 a paper was prepared at the
OIB on the «General Principles of the Decimal Classification*
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