Paul Otlet and classification
Meet Paul Otlet, the forgotten forefather of information architecture and co-creator of the Mundaneum.
[Otlet] wanted to penetrate the boundaries of the books themselves, to unearth the “substance, sources and conclusions” inside. Taking the Dewey Decimal system as his starting point, Otlet began developing what came to be known as the Universal Decimal Classification, now widely recognized as the first—and one of the only—full implementations of a faceted classification system. While Ranganathan rightly receives credit as the philosophical forbear of facets, Otlet was the first to put them to practical use.
October 4th, 2005 at 1:56
[…] No one has mentioned Ranganathan yet. Melvil Dui, of course, and even Paul Otlet, another forgotten library forefather, whose name popped up in the biblioblogosphere recently. What gives? How can I be an effective librarian without the Five Laws? […]