Alex Wright (1)

Paul Otlet was a Belgian who lived through one of the most turbulent centuries in human history - born in 1868, he died in 1944. Hos obsession was to classify all human knowledge in a consistent way and provide practical ways to access that knowledge.

He began by developing methods to describe existing works - books, articles, etc. - on index cards. He later extended this to allow index entries not just for complete works, but for ideas or concepts within a work. Later still, he worked on designs for technologies to access and retrieve information through a workstation he called a Mundaneum.

Otlet is important for three reasons: first, much of his work on classification is still relevant and in use today; second, his approach was always very practical and based on actual, deliverable technologies or capabilities; and, third, he believed in a centralised hierarchical structure for managing knowledge and the access to it (although not necessarily for the centralised storage of that knowledge).

ABout a third of this book discusses the history of knowledge classification and then looks at the current Internet technologies and structures that address this issue. The author highlights areas of commonality and differences from Otlet’s work.

An interesting and highly relevant subject fore today’s electronic world, this work is let down by two weaknesses. The writing is too dry to make this an easy read. Perversely for a biography, too much time is devoted to the ups and downs and ins and outs of Otlet’s work. There should be more discussion of how the issues of who owns and manages classification and access to knowledge, with what objectives in mind, are developing on the Internet.… (mer)

Given the title, I thought the book might go into detail about Otlet's cataloging system, but it doesn't really. It only spends about 2 pages on details of the Universal Decimal Classification, too little to substantiate Wright's claim that it can "create symbolic links between multiple topics".

And regarding the Universal Bibliography (the millions of index cards), I don't think Wright ever says what would appear on a given index card, or how many Otlet might create for a given document, or how all the cards were arranged in the cabinets, and how someone would use the Bibliography to research a topic.

I'm not saying that the whole book should have been such details, but a chapter would have been nice.… (mer)