Paul Otlet

Paul Otlet ( born August 23, 1868 in Brussels, † December 10, 1944 ) was a pioneer of information management and founders of modern documentation science.

Life

Paul Otlet comes from a family of industrialists. He spent his childhood already in libraries. He was taught first by private tutors - only since the age of twelve, he attended a public school. Otlet studied law. During his studies, he recognized the weaknesses of the library system in the 19th century. Along with Henri La Fontaine founded Paul Otlet on 12 September 1895, the Office International de Bibliographie with the goal of a universal library - the Mundaneum - to create. In Mundaneum 15 million plants were then handwritten lists and grouped by topic. Already in 1912 were 1500 written inquiries to numerous areas of knowledge to be answered. In hindsight the Mundaneum appears as a first analog search engine.

In the First World War Paul Otlet lost his son. His personal fate made ​​him a pacifist and a pioneer of the League of Nations. Otlet pursued the idea that an archive of world knowledge could secure peace. 1934 ended its activities in Mundaneum. This year, he said in a release the idea that TVs with radios, books and phones should be connected to provide a global knowledge network for all available.

Otlet coined in the early 20th century, the term documentation as the collection, organization and utilization of documents of all kinds