h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Mundaneum - a Universal Catalogue of All the World's Knowledge - A35592122
Author: Malabarista - now with 32% fewer footnotes - U1528154

An attempt at a subject that is fairly well documented, but not necessarily in English. It involved forays into Belgian French and Spanish that on the whole required more effort than the homework I was procrastinating on I even found an (apparently) pertinent page in Kiswaheli!

I hope you like

Oh, and I'll still be adding lots and lots of hyperlinks - after all, not to do so on this particular entry would be a crime!

Fascinating.

So often nowadays arguements on facts are decided so quickly thanks to the internet - who scored that goal ? - what was that comic's catchphrase ? - Who said that.

And of course the questions have always existed and we used to search haphazardly through reference books.

Never knew about this, quite fascinating.

Curious, first thought that came to mind when I read the title of this thread even before I plugged in, was in a mixture of Spanish and Belgian French. Nice!

Actually, I liked old fashioned reference books better in many ways, simpler, fewer listings, better categorized. On the other hand, one cannot stuff the entire collection of reference books into a small valise and carry it aboard an airplane, the way one can with the PC. In some ways, smaller is better.

1910 is one of my favorite years too. Back later after I've checked my notes.

This is just fascinating

I was astonished to read about the early links - quite ahead of their time these fellows.

One question that I have is how they amassed 17 million cards within their lifetimes - and yet now with a fraction of the original collection left it would take over a hundred years to scan the remaining cards.

And one nitpick - in the section Documenting Knowledge, there is a quote from Paul Otlet dated 1989 - are some numbers transposed?

I'll definitely want to read this again after sleeping on it. Really fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating, thanks so much, Mala!

"while the 19th Century saw a total of 8 million published books, by the end of the 20th century, over one million books were being published every year."

Presumably this refers to separate books and doesn't include multiple copies of the same book?

"This grand idea took physical shape in the form of thousands of wooden drawers stuffed with plain 3" by 5" index cards"

How did the index cards relate to other documents, like the Australian newspapers you mention later? Did they just reference them, and they were stored in another part of the archive?

"Palais du Cinquantenaire. It was part of the Palais Mondial" Where are these? Brussels, presumably?

What are the Ducasse de Mons? Could you explain in the footnote?

Wonderful job, I really enjoyed this.

Right, yes, the numbers I must have mistyped the date, thanks for catching that. It was 1934.

And yes, it's new books - separate manuscripts - published.

As for the scanning - the articles I read weren't *quite* clear - or my French wasn't - but it seems that the cards only contained a very brief alphanumeric code and summary linking the various documents that were in storage in the archive. Hence the 150 rooms required for storage. And each document could be referenced by several cards - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, for example, would be science fiction, and also books by English authors, and also humour, and also books written in English, and books translated into German, and series...

The index cards themselves were really only the links. At least, as far as I could work it out.

Some sources say 12 million cards, some say 15, and the video documentary by Wrayward and the new Mundaneum staff says 17 - that's why I wrote "up to" 17 million cards.

I'll add a footnote for the Palais Mondial and explain the Ducasse, too

Oh, and it's not the cards that are being scanned, but the material they link to. Which is all haphazardly stuffed in boxes right now, nobody knows where what is and what parts are missing. It's the organising, not the scanning, that's the problem. When it was created, they'd acquire a new document *first* and then add all the cards/connections they could think of to the database, updating that as people annotated them.

Ah, that makes sense now.

Did a little more research, with better search terms...

It seems that the index cards themselves just looked like this:

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/files/banda/forgotten_forefather_paul_otlet/image3.jpg

But linked to an archive of hundreds of thousands of text documents and several million pictures.

And that the 17 million index cards, since the information on them was all text, hold about 1 Gigabyte of information

Might need to add that to make it clearer

One thing I've noticed so far is the composition why do you have huge gaps and a header right after a quote. Looks like an intro is missing.

I put in the gaps to separate sections - there doesn't appear to be much of a difference between headers and subheaders

Some Belgian comments...

Tervuren is normally spelt without the e - it's in Dutch speaking Belgium, so best to spell it their way. It's a town rather than a city.

You can still see lots of dusty cards in the Cinquantenaire - it holds a rather antiquated history museum in one wing...

Very nice entry

sprout

Yes, but all the English-speaking sites had spelled it Tervueren - I assumed that was the normal way of spelling it in English, much as The Hague is normally Den Haag or Cologne is Köln - even Brussels is properly either Bruxelles or Brussel I'll double-check that, though.

Thanks for the Cinquantenaire info - I'll add a footnote Though I suspect they may be collecting them to add to the rest

Right, I got about the same number of hits for "Tervuren" and "Tervueren" in several search engines, but "Tervueren" with an e also seems to be a kind of dog, I suppose that's why. I'll change it, you probably know your way around Belgium better than I do

The 1910 paragraph is an example of the gratuitous use of hyperlinks. It is awash with them, and some are misleading.

A link is meant to provide the reader with further information on the highlighted topic, not somewhere that happens to contain the same word or phrase. For example, your link for Jean Anouilh is to an entry that mentions Anoiulh, and then mainly in a footnote. The practice of providing links from adjacent words to different HTML pages is visually poor; for example, in >>..joined LAPD as world's first female police officer...<< the words *female* and *police* appear as though they are a single link, but are not. Ditto 'Halley's Comet'. The *washing machine* entry is not about washing machines, it's about cleaning tips - it *mentions* washing machines, but is not *about* washing machines.

Some of the links, such as Brussels, Thermodynamics and Vincent van Gogh, are perfectly legitimate, although for the Vienna link, A13911725 is arguably better.

The entry itself is good and is long enough to sustain a substantial number of good links distributed throughout the text. However, if as you say, you are going to be 'adding lots and lots of hyperlinks', then I'm afraid its value will be significantly decreased, which would be a great pity.

I'm going to give this one a proper going over probably this evening. As others have said though, it's an interesting one, about a thing I knew nothing about. Great guide material, then.

That's the point - it's *meant* to be a gratuitous use of hyperlinks, linking to everything that could possibly have *any* connection with the subject - because that's what the card catalogue did.

This is why I only put them in the first paragraph, which is meant to be bewildering and show the need for order. I wrote that I'd be adding hyperlinks before I had *any*.

I agree that the rest of the text doesn't need them, or only very sparingly. Makes it harder to read.

But if there's a general consensus that it doesn't work for the first paragraph either, I am willing to remove some

I thought that was clear enough, especially given the fact-after-fact style of para 1. Although, if it's not clear enough, I suppose it could always be pointed out in a footnote that it is, in fact, written like that as an example of what the card index was like in its construction. I'd be inclined to leave it, I have to admit.

Anyway, onwards...

Portugese = Portuguese

"as world's first female police officer" = "as the world's first..."

"the last execution was carried out in Sweden" - how about "Sweden's last execution was carried out"? (some people are still at it, nearly 100 years later, after all)

Footnote 3 needs to be changed a bit.

"such people as HG Wells, who wrote his 'World Brain' essays in 1938, or Jorge Luis Borges' 'Library of Babel',"

...would mean the 'Library of Babel' was a person such as HG Wells. I'd suggest something like

"...or Jorge Luis Borges, whose 'Library of Babel' was...etc etc"

"that is would truly be" = that it would...

"part of the collection was destroyed in the move" - 'during the move' would read more smoothly. Also, immediately after that, 'more parts *were* lost..."

"he died, in near obscurity" not a suggestion, just a point of interest. Ironic since his work was so concerned with preserving and distributing information.

"continued to updated" = continued to update

Just another point of interest: "using the anatomy theatre to hold orations in praise of Otlet and LaFontaine" - fantastic little detail. It just gave me a glimpse into the kind of motley crew who took the wheel after them.

"Belgium's francophone community rescued" - comma after community

historcal = historical

enivisioned = envisioned

Point of interest again: "the fact that only one copy of each document exists means that it must be laboriously copied by anyone wishing to use it" - one foot in the age of the internet, one foot in the age of monks copying out Aristotle.

Thanks for the read.

Thanks, changes made. "that is would truly be" was written like that in the original quote, but since it's a translation rather than Otlet's exact words, I changed it rather than add a [sic]



Some pics of interest - maybe I can base a blob on these, as I'm trying to join the Community Artists

Otlet and his very tidy desk: http://www.lesimpressionsnouvelles.com/images/l'homme_qui_voulait_classer.jpg

The human search engine: http://www.lesimpressionsnouvelles.com/images/l'homme_qui_voulait_classer_2.jpg