Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (Hardcover)

from MikeRhode

Interesting, but a bit padded in parts. I'm very sympathetic to the basic issue of linking information and making it available though.

from pierthinker

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 ex...

from jmdyck

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". ...

from Archivist13

As a librarian, I found this book to be extremely interesting. Otlet's hard work has set the stage for future information professionals, and certainly he is responsible for the success of research performed in the early 20th century, due to his work cataloging the worlds knowledge. I found that t...