Paul Otlet

Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet ( 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944) was a Belgian bibliographer, author, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist. He is best known for his promotion of universal documentation and as co-founded and leader of the International Institute for Bibliography, later named the International Federation for Documentation.

Works

Otlet founded numerous ambitious international organizations generally in collaboration with [[Henri LaFontaine.

Publications

Otlet wrote and published very frequently. Many of his writings were published or reprinted in the IIB Publications series. For a list see Rayward, W. B. Bibliography of the works of Paul Otlet.

• Traité de documentation. [Treatise on documentation] Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934. His best-known, encyclopedic work.
• Monde, essai d'universalisme. [World: Essay on universalism]. Bruxelles, Mundaneum, 1935. A theoretic work that complements his Traité de documentation.
• Otlet, Paul, International Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays. Translated and edited by W. Boyd Rayward. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990. A useful selection selection of Otlet's writings, carefully translated and annotated by his biographer.

• "Un peu de bibliographie." Palais, Organe des Conférences du jeune barreau de Belgique 1891-1892: 254-271. This short early paper outlined his life's work. An English translation "Something about Bibliography" in International Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays, pp. 11-24.

Further reading

• "Paul Otlet" Wikipedia [1]

• Rayward, W. Boyd. The Universe of Information: the Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and international Organization. FID Publication 520. Moscow: International Federation for Documentation by the All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI), 1975. A detailed well-documented account.

• Wright, Alex. Cataloguing the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age. Oxford University Press, 2014. A readable biography.