Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (186871944) and Hypertext

Journal of the University Librarians Association of Sri Lanka, 2014

The paper covers a review of evidence existing for documentation systems followed in the pre Christian literary history and during the 19 th C. A special attention was given to the evidence of a most comprehensive cataloguing system followed in the Alexandrian library 'the pinakes' which had a great impact to cataloguing, indexing and documentation tradition thereafter. Even though the concept 'documentation' was not introduced at that time during the 1 st century to date, many attempts were made to capture the knowledge by scientists, priests, publishers and librarians especially after the printing technology was introduced in 16 th C. A special attention was paid to the most versatile and systematic documentation system designed and carried out in 19 th C by two visionaries, Paul Otlet and Henry la Fontaine who were creators of the concept 'documentation'. Evidence for this effort still exists in a card based archive in Belgium and its vision and design is now identified by computer scientists as the base structure of the World Wide Web and the base architecture of modern computer networks and search engines. The article provides a brief review of the structure and history of the bibliographic repertory of 18 million index cards.

1995

The term docuverse was first developed by Apple Computer guru Allen Kay in the late 1960’s. The underlying idea can be traced back decades earlier, to the visionary Vannevar Bush and the Memex (Bush, 1945). According to Kay, a docuverse is a set of related documents together with the linkages between them. In this paper, a docuverse is conceived as a collection of related scholarly documents together with the links, ties and bonds that can bring them together into an integrated logical and conceptual whole. Kay who also coined the term hypertext, which refers to an electronic document with existing and anticipated hypermedia technology. have already made possible the construction of an electronic web of all the related documents of social science (and any other academic discipline, professional field or interdiscipline) like third sector studies

Diogenes, 2002

Proceedings from the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Document Academy

Paul Otlet (1868-1944) has left information science a vast written legacy. He imagined future developments of documentation around new devices. His anticipations have attracted some misunderstandings and criticism. Otlet’s more daring projections were considered utopian but they are best studied in the historical context of his time. We present the relationship between the concepts of documentation and hyperdocumentation, the ultimate prospect of documentation, and the proximity between Otlet’s work and current conceptions of transhumanism in view of his Mundaneum project.

Journal of Product Innovation Management, 1998

This article studies the circumstances and events that finally led to the world's first way to browse the Internet, called the World Wide Web (WWW) at the European Laboratory of Particle Physics (CERN). It is shown that few bright and adventurous persons created the innovative technology from an unique combination of existing technologies and actions spirited by the demanding environment of high energy physics with its global need to share documents. This technology is now reforming and changing the existing mode of work, trade and conununication, simply affecting the whole society. Partly the non-mission oriented management approach accompanied with individualistic ideals and unique surroundings were the driving forces behind this innovation. Direct communication with the end-user community prevented the developers from producing something with no relevance and application, as even the first prototype tools were inunediately used and exploited. The story goes back to the beginning of 1980's world of physics with multiple word processors and document formats, network pioneering and the multimedia hypes along with hypertext philosophies. The aiticle limits its scope to activities prior to the rapid and global diffusion of the WWW on the Internet, i.e. on what happened at CERN between 1980 and 1992. Surprisingly, the WWW story shows that the original key technologies in networks, document formats and desktops were all somehow present when the innovation was made. They had laid dormant for decades before one desktop computer integrated them into one functional unit enabling the innovator to materialise his vision.

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2005

M y research over the years has focused on historical questions related to library and information science as providing the intellectual underpinning of a variety of professional practices related to the dissemination and use of information. I have published a number of historical studies examining utopian schemes for managing knowledge, the evolution of institutionalized or organizational aspects of information infrastructure (as represented especially by libraries, museums and systems for the international organization and dissemination of information), and the emergence of what I think of as an interdiscipline - nowadays often designated library and information science - concerned with the study of these phenomena.

Knowledge organization, 1993

2003

This paper is based on the reference background of historical librarianship, so that it does not address astronomical problems per se. In this respect we can see the historical astronomical material at three different levels: first, as factual data preserved from the past or as that we can take today as factual data; second, as evidence of the acquisition and explication of this factual material, i.e. history of astronomy as science; and third, as the inclusion of astronomical progress into historical material in general, and, in another sense, into the development of intellectual thought. At present we are witnessing a transition from an environment of predominantly printed material into an electronic-digital environment. In connection with this important change in communication there is also a new conceptualization of information and knowledge. This must be responded to by a conversion of existing sources and the creation of new ones. This wider horizon will require fundamental changes in the domain of the historical librarian. Creation of historical resources in the electronic-digital environment has three aspects: first, it is a permanent creation of digital image copies; second, building a catalogue as an access point common for both original and subsidiary documents; third, production of full-text databases of bibliographic and factual databases as well as comments-monographs. Owing to the fact that there does not exist in the electronic-digital environment any document in the strict sense of the word, it increases the importance of the context of data and the information itself becomes an interpretation. Also, due to the fact that the subject itself appears as a theme at more than one level, the knowledge becomes an interpretation at each next level. Thus the resources in the electronic-digital environment have the potential for an indirect, indefinite utilization. So it is not enough to just represent data in an objective way, but it is also necessary to prepare them such that they allow interpretation in various contexts (the sphere of information) and also for various disciplines (the sphere of knowledge). It demands both inter-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary approaches not just a concentration on a certain discipline and specialization. From all of this follows a need of changing both the library and the information preparation for the information network of the electronic-digital environment.

International Journal of Information Management, 1991

The creation of the universal library where the whole of human knowledge would be accumulated has long been a dream of librarians and scholars. The advent of computers, and of the Internet especially, made this vision possible of realisation - so we are told by many librarians, teachers and politicians, not to mention computer specialists. Yet we should not ignore lessons of history. Attempts to create universal libraries made in previous centuries failed. In the twentieth century knowledge is not perceived as a solid structure any more. The universal library is a utopian vision and it belongs to the same category as the universal encyclopaedia and the universal language.