Paul Otlet
Sign in to saveAlso known as Paul Marie Otlet
Belgian author, librarian and anti-colonial thinker (1868–1944)
Key facts
- Born
- ( 1868-08-23 ) 23 August 1868, Brussels, Belgium
- Died
- 10 December 1944 (1944-12-10) (aged 76), Brussels, Belgium
- Alma mater
- Catholic University of Leuven Free University of Brussels
- Known for
- One of several people who have been considered the founders of information science
- Fields
- Information science
- Institutions
- Institut International de Bibliographie (now the International Federation for Information and Documentation )
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Ghislain
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Belgium
- Place of birth
- Brussels
- Place of death
- Brussels
- Father
- Edouard Otlet
- Occupation
- Esperantist
- Educated at
- Collège Saint-Michel
- Languages spoken
- Esperanto
- Native language
- French
- Notable work
- Universal Decimal Classification
- Field of work
- information science
- Image
- Paul Otlet à son bureau (cropped).jpg
- Work location
- Brussels
- Residence
- Hôtel Otlet
Show 11 more facts
- Commons category
- Paul Otlet
- date of birth
- 1868-08-23
- date of death
- 1944-12-10
- Commons Creator page
- Paul Otlet
- writing language
- French
- influenced by
- Melvil Dewey
- archives at
- Mundaneum
- birth name
- Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet
- short name
- Paul Otlet
- member of
- peace movement
- name in native language
- Paul Otlet
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet (/ɒtˈleɪ/; French: [pɔl maʁi ɡilɛ̃ ɔtlɛ]; 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944) was a Belgian bibliographer, lawyer, and peace activist, and a key figure in documentation science, a precursor to information science.
Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, which would later become a faceted classification. Otlet was responsible for the development of an early information retrieval tool, the "Repertoire Bibliographique Universel" (RBU). RBU was used by the International Institute of Bibliography which later became the Mundaneum. Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize and connect knowledge, culminating in two books, the Traité de Documentation (1934) and Monde: Essai d'universalisme (1935). His ideas for information collection, storage and retrieval have been compared to early incarnations of the internet and search engines.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paul Otlet” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.