Paul Otlet: A pioneer of the organization of world nets dealing with dissemination of registered information

Abstract

A study of the works by Paul Otlet which emphasize the Monographic Principle: one of his major contributions for the establishment of Documentation and Information Science, and a predecessive idea of hypertext. Otlet's 1934 book Traité de Documentation: le livre sur le livre: théorie et pratique announces many of the current ideas about the organization of cooperative, international networks for processing and exchanging document information. In this work, Otlet defines the field of Documentation and establishes theories, methods and techniques to organize and distribute recorded knowledge. A review of Otlet's work is fundamental for understanding many of the theoretical, methodological and epistemological underpinnings of Documentation and Information Science.