Mundaneum
Institution aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge founded in 1910
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Key Takeaways
- The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification.
- The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and (somewhat more tenuously) as a precursor to the Internet.
- History The Mundaneum was created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on documentation science.
- Otlet and La Fontaine organized an International Conference of International Associations, which was the origin of the Union of International Associations (UIA).
- Some consider it a forerunner of the Internet (or, perhaps more appropriately, of systematic knowledge projects such as Wikipedia and WolframAlpha), and Otlet himself had dreams that one day, somehow, all the information he collected could be accessed by people from the comfort of their own homes.
The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and (somewhat more tenuously) as a precursor to the Internet.
In the 21st century, the Mundaneum is a non-profit organisation based in Mons, Belgium, that runs an exhibition space, website and archive, which celebrate the legacy of the original Mundaneum.
History
The Mundaneum was created in 1910, following an initiative begun in 1895 by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, as part of their work on documentation science. Otlet first called it the Palais Mondial ("World Palace"), and it occupied the left wing of the Cinquantenaire Palace, a government building in Brussels. Otlet and La Fontaine organized an International Conference of International Associations, which was the origin of the Union of International Associations (UIA).
Otlet regarded the project as the centrepiece of a new "world city"—a centrepiece, which eventually became an archive with more than 12 million index cards and documents. Some consider it a forerunner of the Internet (or, perhaps more appropriately, of systematic knowledge projects such as Wikipedia and WolframAlpha), and Otlet himself had dreams that one day, somehow, all the information he collected could be accessed by people from the comfort of their own homes.
An English pamphlet published in 1914 described it:
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