Reading list

Cross-readings. Not a bibliography.

Paul Otlet

• Paul Otlet, L’afrique aux noirs, Bruxelles: Ferdinand Larcier, 1888.

• Paul Otlet, L’Éducation et les Instituts du Palais Mondial (Mundaneum). Bruxelles: Union des Associations Internationales, 1926.

• Paul Otlet, Cité mondiale. Geneva: World civic center: Mundaneum. Bruxelles: Union des Associations Internationales, 1929.

• Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934.

• Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde, Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935. See also: http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/uia/docs/otlet_contents.php

• Paul Otlet, Plan belgique; essai d'un plan général, économique, social, culturel. Plan d'urbanisation national. Liaison avec le plan mondial. Conditions. Problèmes. Solutions. Réformes, Bruxelles: Éditiones Mundaneum, 1935.

Re-reading Otlet

Or, reading the readers that explored and contextualized the work of Otlet in recent times.

• Jacques Gillen, Stéphanie Manfroid, and Raphaèle Cornille (eds.), Paul Otlet, fondateur du Mundaneum (1868-1944). Architecte du savoir, Artisan de paix, Mons: Éditions Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2010.

• Françoise Levie, L’homme qui voulait classer le monde. Paul Otlet et le Mundaneum, Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2006.

• Warden Boyd Rayward, 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.

• Warden Boyd Rayward, Universum informastsii Zhizn' i deiatl' nost' Polia Otle, Trans. R.S. Giliarevesky, Moscow: VINITI, 1976.
• Warden Boyd Rayward (ed.), International Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays of Paul Otlet, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1990.

• Warden Boyd Rayward, El Universo de la Documentacion: la obra de Paul Otlet sobra documentacion y organizacion internacional, Trans. Pilar Arnau Rived, Madrid: Mundanau, 2005.

• Warden Boyd Raywar, "Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext." Journal of the American Society for Information Science (1986-1998) 45, no. 4 (05, 1994): 235-251.

• Warden Boyd Rayward (who translated and adapted), Mundaneum: Archives of Knowledge, Urbana-Campaign, Ill. : Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010. Original: Charlotte Dubray et al., Mundaneum: Les Archives de la Connaissance, Bruxelles: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2008.

• Wouter Van Acker,[http://staging01.muse.jhu.edu/journals/perspectives_on_science/v019/19.1.van-acker.html “Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education. The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of the Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath” in Perspectives on Science, Vol.19, nr.1, 2011, p. 32-80.

• Wouter Van Acker, “Universalism as Utopia. A Historical Study of the Schemes and Schemas of Paul Otlet (1868-1944)”, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University Press, Zelzate, 2011.

• Theater Adhoc, The humor and tragedy of completeness, 2005.

Fathers of the internet

Constructing a posthumous pre-history of contemporary networking technologies.

• Christophe Lejeune, Ce que l’annuaire fait à Internet - Sociologie des épreuves documentaires, in Cahiers dela documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2006/3.

• Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell, Divining a Digital Future, Chicago: MIT Press 2011.

• John Johnston, The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI, Chicago: MIT Press 2008.

• Charles van den Heuvel Building society, constructing knowledge, weaving the web, in Boyd Rayward [ed.] European Modernism and the Information Society, London: Ashgate Publishers 2008, chapter 7 pp. 127-153.

• Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, Ora Lassila, The Semantic Web, in Scientific American - SCI AMER , vol. 284, no. 5, pp. 34-43, 2001.

• Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, Oxford University Press, 2014.

• Popova, Maria, “The Birth of the Information Age: How Paul Otlet’s Vision for Cataloging and Connecting Humanity Shaped Our World”, Brain Pickings, 2014.

• Heuvel, Charles van den, “Building Society, Constructing Knowledge, Weaving the Web”. in European Modernism and the Information Society – Informing the Present, Understanding the Past, Aldershot, 2008, pp. 127–153.

Classifying the world

The recurring tensions between the world and its systematic representation.

• ShinJoung Yeo, James R. Jacobs, Diversity matters? Rethinking diversity in libraries, Radical Reference Countepoise 9 (2) Spring, 2006. p. 5-8.

• Thomas Hapke, Wilhelm Ostwald's Combinatorics as a Link between In-formation and Form, in Library Trends, Volume 61, Number 2, Fall 2012.

• Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, Thomas E. Uebel, Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

• Nathan Ensmenger, The Computer Boys Take Over: Computers, Programmers, and the Politics of Technical Expertise. MIT Press, 2010.

• Ronald E. Day, The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power, Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

• Markus Krajewski, Peter Krapp Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 The MIT Press
• Eric de Groller A Study of general categories applicable to classification and coding in documentation; Documentation and terminology of science; 1962.

• Marlene Manoff, "Theories of the archive from across the disciplines," in portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2004), pp. 9–25.
• Charles van den Heuvel, W. Boyd Rayward, Facing Interfaces: Paul Otlet's Visualizations of Data Integration. Journal of the American society for information science and technology (2011).

Don't be evil

Standing on the hands of Internet giants.

• Rene Koenig, Miriam Rasch (eds), Society of the Query Reader: Reflections on Web Search, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2014.

• Matthew Fuller, Andrew Goffey, Evil Media. Cambridge, Mass., United States: MIT Press, 2012.

• Steve Levy In The Plex. Simon & Schuster, 2011.

• Dan Schiller, ShinJoung Yeo, Powered By Google: Widening Access and Tightening Corporate Control in: Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Volume 20 Issue 1 (2015).

• Invisible Committee, Fuck Off Google, 2014.

• Dave Eggers, The Circle. Knopf, 2014.

• Matteo Pasquinelli, Google’s PageRank Algorithm: A Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the Common Intellect. In: Konrad Becker, Felix Stalder (eds), Deep Search, London: Transaction Publishers: 2009.

• Joris van Hoboken, Search Engine Freedom: On the Implications of the Right to Freedom of Expression for the Legal Governance of Web Search Engines. Kluwer Law International, 2012.

• Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. The MIT Press, 2008.

• Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry). University of California Press. 2011.

• William Miller, Living With Google. In: Journal of Library Administration Volume 47, Issue 1-2, 2008.

• Lawrence Page, Sergey Brin The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. Computer Networks, vol. 30 (1998), pp. 107-117.

• Ken Auletta Googled: The end of the world as we know it. Penguin Press, 2009.

Embedded hierarchies

• Paul Otlet, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934. (for alphabet hierarchy, see page 71)

• Paul Otlet, L’afrique aux noirs, Bruxelles: Ferdinand Larcier, 1888.

• Judy Wajcman, Feminism Confronts Technology, University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.

• Judge, Anthony, “Union of International Associations – Virtual Organization – Paul Otlet's 100-year Hypertext Conundrum?”, 2001.

• Ducheyne, Steffen, “Paul Otlet's Theory of Knowledge and Linguistic Objectivism”, in Knowledge Organization, no 32, 2005, pp. 110–116.

Architectural visions

Writings on how Otlet's knowledge site was successively imagined and visualized on grand architectural scales.

• Catherine Courtiau, "La cité internationale 1927-1931," in Transnational Associations, 5/1987: 255-266.

• Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio, 1982.

• Isabelle Rieusset-Lemarie, "P. Otlet's Mundaneum and the International Perspective in the History of Documentation and Information science," in Journal of the American Society for Information Science (1986-1998)48.4 (Apr 1997): 301-309.

• Le Corbusier, Vers une Architecture, Paris: les éditions G. Crès, 1923.

• Transnational Associations, "Otlet et Le Corbusier" 1927-31, INGO Development Projects: Quantity or Quality, Issue No: 5, 1987.

• Wouter Van Acker. "Hubris or utopia? Megalomania and imagination in the work of Paul Otlet," in Cahiers de la documentation – Bladen voor documentatie – 2012/2, 58-66.

• Wouter Van Acker. "Architectural Metaphors of Knowledge: The Mundaneum Designs of Maurice Heymans, Paul Otlet, and Le Corbusier." Library Trends 61, no. 2 (2012): 371-396.

• Van Acker, Wouter, Somsen, Geert, “A Tale of Two World Capitals – the Internationalisms of Pieter Eijkman and Paul Otlet”, in Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, Vol. 90, nr.4, 2012.

• Wouter Van Acker, "Opening the Shrine of the Mundaneum The Positivist Spirit in the Architecture of Le Corbusier and his Belgian “Idolators”, in Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand: 30, Open, edited by Alexandra Brown and Andrew Leach (Gold Coast,Qld: SAHANZ, 2013), vol. 2, 791-805.

• Anthony Vidler, “The Space of History: Modern Museums from Patrick Geddes to Le Corbusier,” in The Architecture of the Museum: Symbolic Structures, Urban Contexts, ed. Michaela Giebelhausen (Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press, 2003).

• Volker Welter. "Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of Life." Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2003.

• Alfred Willis, “The Exoteric and Esoteric Functions of Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum,” Modulus/University of Virginia School of Architecture Review 12, no. 21 (1980).

Zeitgeist

It includes both century-old sources and more recent ones on the parallel or entangled movements around the Mundaneum time.

• Hendrik Christian Andersen and Ernest M. Hébrard. Création d'un Centre mondial de communication. Paris, 1913.

• Julie Carlier, "Moving beyond Boundaries: An Entangled History of Feminism in Belgium, 1890–1914," Ph.D. dissertation, Universiteit Gent, 2010. (esp. 439-458.)

• Bambi Ceuppens, Congo made in Flanders?: koloniale Vlaamse visies op "blank" en "zwart" in Belgisch Congo. [Gent]: Academia Press, 2004.

• Conseil International des Femmes (International Council of Women), Office Central de Documentation pour les Questions Concernant la Femme. Rapport. Bruxelles : Office Central de Documentation Féminine, 1909.

• Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic pacifism waging war on war in Europe, 1815-1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

• Sylvie Fayet-Scribe, "Women Professionals in Documentation in France during the 1930s," Libraries & the Cultural Record Vol. 44, No. 2, Women Pioneers in the Information Sciences Part I, 1900-1950 (2009), pp. 201-219. (translated by Michael Buckland)

• François Garas, Mes temples. Paris: Michalon, 1907.

• Madeleine Herren, Hintertüren zur Macht: Internationalismus und modernisierungsorientierte Aussenpolitik in Belgien, der Schweiz und den USA 1865-1914. München: Oldenbourg, 2000.

• Robert Hoozee and Mary Anne Stevens, Impressionism to Symbolism: The Belgian Avant-Garde 1880-1900, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1994.

• Markus Krajewski, Die Brücke: A German contemporary of the Institut International de Bibliographie. In: Cahiers de la documentation / Bladen voor documentatie 66.2 (Juin, Numéro Spécial 2012), 25–31.

• Daniel Laqua, "Transnational intellectual cooperation, the League of Nations, and the problem of order," in Journal of Global History (2011) 6, pp. 223–247.

• Lewis Pyenson and Christophe Verbruggen, "Ego and the International: The Modernist Circle of George Sarton," Isis, Vol. 100, No. 1 (March 2009), pp. 60-78.

• Elisée Reclus, Nouvelle géographie universelle; la terre et les hommes, Paris, Hachette et cie., 1876-94.

• Edouard Schuré, Les grands initiés: esquisse de l'histoire secrète des religions, 1889.

• Rayward, Warden Boyd (ed.), European Modernism and the Information Society: Informing the Present, Understanding the Past. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2008.

• Van Acker, Wouter, “Internationalist Utopias of Visual Education. The Graphic and Scenographic Transformation of the Universal Encyclopaedia in the Work of Paul Otlet, Patrick Geddes, and Otto Neurath”, in Perspectives on Science, Vol.19, nr.1, 2011, p. 32-80.

• Nader Vossoughian, "The Language of the World Museum: Otto Neurath, Paul Otlet, Le Corbusier", Transnational Associations 1-2 (January-June 2003), Brussels, pp 82-93.

• Alfred Willis, “The Exoteric and Esoteric Functions of Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum,” Modulus/University of Virginia School of Architecture Review 12, no. 21 (1980).

Last Revision: 2·08·2016