Transformation of the Universal Encyclopaedia

During the interwar period, the encyclopaedia became a popular educative instrument for demonstrating knowledge. Within the ªeld of cultural inter-nationalism, the pioneer of documentation Paul Otlet redeªned the encyclo-paedia as a documentary product or as we would say today a “multi-media” product. This article discusses the exchange of ideas between Otlet, Patrick Geddes and Otto Neurath and shows how the graphic and scenographic dem-onstration of encyclopaedic knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth cen-tury applied the values of scientiªc universalism to programs of international education and cultural reform. Paul Otlet (1868–1944) was a Belgian intellectual, a utopian internation-alist and a visionary theorist of the ªeld of information science. His work is a milestone in the history of information science since he launched the concept of “documentation, ” a ªeld that evolved out of bibliography and developed into information science.1 Otlet deªned documentation as the whole of the proper means of passing on, communicating, and distribut-I am grateful to W. Boyd Rayward, Pieter Uyttenhove, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. The research presented in this article is a result of a doctoral research project on the visualizations made by Paul Otlet, which is ªnanced by FWO Flanders and will be completed by the beginning of 2011