June 20, 2008, 10:32 am
A Radiated Library and the Televised Book
By Henry Woodbury
In the canonical history of the origins of the Internet, Belgian Paul Otlet does not make an appearance. He was, perhaps, too early and too utopian, setting forth a plan for “a global network of computers” in 1934. Otlet’s vision derived from his life’s work creating the Mundaneum, a “universal bibliography” cataloged on index cards. For a fee, anyone in the world could mail or telegraph a request that Otlet’s small staff of professional librarians would investigate.
As the Mundaneum accumulated millions of entries, Otlet realized that his index-card-based system was becoming too cumbersome to manage. At that point he began working on ideas for electronic data storage and a totally paperless system — in his words, “a radiated library and the televised book.”
Eventually lack of funding and the onset of World War II doomed the project. Only recently have Otlet’s writings and the remnants of the Mundaneum archive begun to receive attention.
In this vein, The New York Times article linked above provides a history and appreciation of Otlet’s work, a visual explanation of the Mundaneum card cataloging system, and a clip from the documentary film The Man Who Wanted to Classify The World.
