Fun_People Archive
12 Sep
On This Day -- September 12

Date: Tue, 12 Sep 95 19:07:03 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: On This Day -- September 12

Forwarded-by: lanih@info.SIMS.Berkeley.EDU (Lani Herrmann)
From: "Michael K. Buckland" <buckland@otlet.sims.berkeley.edu>

Information management / studies / systems has the curious characteristic
of being  perennially regarded  as  "an emerging new field" and has been
long enough for it to have some anniversaries - like today:  September 12.

It was on this day, September 12...

... that Paul Otlet and his friend Henri LaFontaine established an
institute to tackle the problems of providing universal access to all
recorded information.  Despite difficulties they achieved a great deal:
They advanced classification theory toward modern "facetted"
classification; they pioneered hypertext and briefly provided a public
information service using it; they developed specifications for
workstations, for bibliographical databases, and anticipated the use of
electronic telecommunications for fulltext access; the emphasized new
technology and the importance of adherence to standards; all this and
much more, in the institute that is now called the International
Federation for Information and Documentation ("FID")...

... established Brussels, Belgium, on this day a century ago, on
September 12 in 1895.

© 1995 Peter Langston