Paul Otlet: A Visionary to Unify Global Knowledge

The Father of library science of India, Dr. Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan (1892-1972) once described Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as the builders of Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) scheme, though this scheme was not newly introduced but adopted from Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) scheme of Melvil Dewey. Actually, DDC scheme was developed by Melvil Dewey in 1873 while working at Amherst College library in New York. He assigned the classification codes to the books of that library collection. In 1876, he published the classification in pamphlet form with the title “A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library”. The foresight of DDC scheme was initially thus just to arrange a particular library collection in a more systematic way to enable easy and quick retrieval. This DDC scheme is the basic foundation of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) scheme. In 1885, Otlet and La Fontaine created Universal Bibliographic Repertory (Répertoire Bibliographique Universel) (RBU) which was intended to become a comprehensive classified index to all hitherto published information. The development of such a universal index essentially needs the arrangement of the entries. Again, the annual growth-rate of literature at the last decade of 19th Century was around one lakh books and ten lakhs periodical articles.