The Analogous Spaces of Paul Otlet (1868-1944)

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Understanding Art-Making as Documentation

Though typically arts information professionals are concerned with the documentation of artwork, this conceptual paper explores how art-making itself can be considered a form of documentation and finished artworks as documents in their own right. On this view, artwork references something outside itself as part of a broader system, and exposes how it references. The implications of this perspective are discussed, springing from a historical discussion of document epistemology, research on the information behavior of artists and the philosophy of Nelson Goodman. This discussion provides a framework for conceptualizing artistic information behavior along the entire information chain. Framing art-making in the terms of information science in this way may help arts information professionals assist artists, and it provides grounds for deeper co-understandings between artists and information scientists. Additionally, once information scientists consider art as a document, we can begin to see that even non-artistic documents perhaps never were as "objective" or "factual" as they seemed

Origins of Modern Data Analysis Linked to the Beginnings and Early Development of Computer Science and Information Engineering

The history of data analysis that is addressed here is underpinned by two themes, -- those of tabular data analysis, and the analysis of collected heterogeneous data. "Exploratory data analysis" is taken as the heuristic approach that begins with data and information and seeks underlying explanation for what is observed or measured. I also cover some of the evolving context of research and applications, including scholarly publishing, technology transfer and the economic relationship of the university to society.Comment: 26 page

Anticipating the Internet: how the predictions of Paul Otlet, H.G. Wells and Vannevar Bush shaped the Digital Information Age

This is an historical research project that investigates predictions of future information technology made by Paul Otlet, H.G. Wells and Vannevar Bush, specifically those described in the Mundaneum, World Brain and Memex respectively. It is carried out by means of an extended review of the relevant Library and Information Science literature and aims to determine the reasons for their predictions, the relationship (if any) between them, and their influence upon the development of the modern-day Internet. After investigating the work of each figure in turn, further investigation is undertaken through a comparative analysis. It concludes that, although there are differences in approach and emphasis between the predictions, each of them was made in reaction to a common problem – the proliferation of published information – and each of them aimed to solve this problem by applying scientific means to improve the free flow of information throughout society, thus improving it for the benefit of all. Furthermore, their ideas stemmed from the same intellectual traditions of positivism and utopianism, and were expressed through technology, that although advanced for its time, was rapidly superseded by the rise of digital computing during the second half of the twentieth century. Finally, although the technology they used to express their predictions is now obsolete, and had little direct influence on the practical workings of the contemporary Internet, the works, concepts and ideas of Otlet, Wells and Bush remain highly relevant in today’s ever-increasingly Digital Age

Transnational intellectual cooperation, the League of Nations, and the problem of order

This article examines the political and cultural contexts of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation and the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. These two League of Nations bodies were charged with fostering international understanding through the promotion of educational, scientific, and cultural exchange. Whereas previous studies have revealed the institutional and diplomatic processes that shaped these bodies, the present article considers their intellectual genealogies and trajectories. Adopting a transnational perspective, it argues that the multi-layered quest for order is central to understanding intellectual cooperation in the interwar years. This concern was reflected in the role of cultural relations within the post-war order, and in the aim of strengthening intellectuals’ position in the social order (both through legal instruments and through new tools for ‘intellectual labour’)

Interrogating spatial analogies relating to knowledge organization: Paul Otlet and others

The author provides an examination of how ideas about place and space have been used in thinking about the organization of knowledge. The spatial analogies of Paul Otlet (1868–1944) in relation to his overall vision are traditional and conventional. Notions of space, place, position, location, and movement are frequent in the work of other leading innovators (Martin Schrettinger, Melvil Dewey, Wilhelm Ostwald, Emanuel Goldberg, and Suzanne Briet) concerning specific practical aspects of knowledge organization. Otlet’s spatial imagery is more original and more ingenious when applied to technical problems compared to his overall vision.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Ego and the international. The modernist circle of George Sarton

The early years of Isis are examined in the light of George Sarton’s connection with Paul Otlet (1868 –1944) and Henri Lafontaine (1854 –1943), founders in 1895 of the International Office of Bibliography and in 1907 of the Union of International Associations, both in Brussels. Otlet, known as one of the fathers of the Information Age, invented the science of information, which he called, in French, documentation. Lafontaine, a socialist senator in Belgium, won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Peace. Sarton shared Otlet and Lafontaine’s views about pacifism, internationalism, and rational bibliography; he designed Isis to fit with the modernist goal, expressed by Otlet and Lafontaine, of using information to generate new knowledge

Analisis Perbandingan Tokoh Perpustakaan Paul Otlet Dan Sulistyo-Basuki Tentang Dokumentasi

AbstrakDokumentasi menurut Sulistyo-Basuki dapat dibagi menjadi definisi yang berkaitan dengan kepustakawanan serta definisi yang tidak ada kaitannya dengan kepustakawanan. Definisi yang berkaitan dengan kepustakawanan dapat dirinci lagi menjadi tiga bagian besar yaitu definisi supraposisi, definisi paralel dan definisi infraposisi.definisi berdasarkan supraposisi menganggap bahwa dalam dokumentasi termasuk pula perpustakaan. Maksudnya segala kegiatan yang menyangkur dokumen (segala satuan materi yang memuat informasi) dianggap sebagai fungsi dokumetnasi sepanjang kegiatan tersebut menyangkut masalah pengadaan, pengolahan, penyusunan, penerbitan serta penyebaran dokumen. Definisi ini dipengaruhi oleh definisi dari Paul Otlet dan Jesse Shera. Paul Otlet mendefinisikan dokumentasi  sebagai pengumpulan, penyusunan, dan penyaluran setiap jenis dokumentasi dlam setiap bidang kegiatan manusia.Kata Kunci: Sulistyo-Basuki,Paul Otlet, Dokumentasi, Kepustakawanan. AbstractAccording to Sulistyo-Basuki, documentation can be divided into definitions related to librarianship and definitions that have nothing to do with librarianship. Definitions related to librarianship can be further broken down into three major sections, namely the definition of supraposition, the definition of parallel and the definition of infraposition. Definitions based on supraposition assume that the documentation includes libraries. This means that all activities involving documents (all units of material containing information) are considered as a documentation function as long as these activities involve issues of procurement, processing, compilation, publication and dissemination of documents. This definition is influenced by the definition of Paul Otlet and Jesse Shera. Paul Otlet defines documentation as the collection, compilation, and distribution of every type of documentation in every field of human activity.Keywords: Sulistyo Basuki, Paul Otlet, Documentation, Librarianship

The Architext of Biblion: Digital Echoes of Paul Otlet

Paul Otlet\u27s 1934 Traité de documentation is a landmark publication, but its considerable scope, complex structure and sheer volume make it a particularly challenging resource to use. This paper reports on an experiment in which visual methods and lexicometry are used to understand how the Traité is organized and what it is about. We describe the underlying logic of the experiment using the concepts of biblion and architext, then process the table of contents and full text of the book with several visualization methods, discussing their output. This allows us to confirm and expand on previous qualitative appraisal of the book, using quantitative methods. While primarily focused on the value of digital hermeneutics, the paper also touches on the heuristic potential of visualization when used as a methodology for data exploration