The Origins of Information Science and the International Institute of Bibliography/International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID)

This article suggests that the ideas and practices emfundamental importance in the development of what we braced by the term ‘‘documentation,’’ introduced by Paul now call information science. Otlet and his colleagues to describe the work of the InThe Office and the Institute were closely related orgaternational Institute of Bibliography (later FID) that they nizations. The Office was subsidized by, and was legally set up in Brussels in 1895, constituted a new ‘‘discursive responsible to, the Belgian government and functioned formation,’’ to echo Foucault. While today’s special terminology of information science was not then in use, essentially as the administrative center for the Institute. this should not obscure the fact that key concepts for For ease of reference here, both organizations will generinformation science as we now understand this field of ally be referred to simply as the Institute or IIB. They study and research—and the technical systems and prowere created to support new systems to exploit the potenfessional activities in which it is anchored—were implicit tialities inherent in the information technology of the in and operationalized by what was created within the International Institute of Bibliography in 1895 and the time. Over a period of about 40 years, there was an interdecades that followed. The ideas and practices to be esting reciprocal interplay between actual system develdiscussed would today be rubricated as information opment, what might be described as hyperbolic extrapolatechnology, information retrieval, search strategies, intion from the existing systems—the grand system vision formation centers, fee-based information services, propounded in various places by Paul Otlet (see, e.g., the linked data bases, database management software, scholarly communication networks, multimedia and hyppapers in Rayward, 1990) —and the gradual elaboration ertext, even the modern, diffuse notion of ‘‘information’’ of the fairly sophisticated theoretical framework within itself. The article argues that important aspects of the which the systems were originally created, reaching its origins of information science, as we now know it in the fullest expression Otlet’s Traité de Documentation (Otlet, U.S. and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, were 1934). This framework involved new ways of looking at contained within or became an extension of the discursive formation that we have labeled ‘‘documentation.’’ and speaking about aspects of the world of knowledge, books, and libraries, and the social infrastructure of which they were part. This complex interrelation of systems Introduction and rationalization established what we might call, after At first sight, it is curious to discuss the history of Foucault, a new ‘‘discursive formation’’ (Foucault, information science in terms of the creation of an interna1972). A ‘‘discursive formation,’’ for which, embracing tional organization in Belgium in 1895, an organization Otlet’s own neologism for ease of reference, the transiwith which there has been very little sustained contact in tional term, ‘‘documentation,’’ is useful. the English-speaking world. Especially is this so as we This new ‘‘discursive formation’’ involved the proare told that the term ‘‘information science’’ was first mulgation of new ideas, the identification of what were used only in 1955 (Shapiro, 1995). But even a cursory regarded as new phenomena, and changes in language examination of the history and activities of the Internapractices, especially the elaboration of a new terminology. tional Institute and Office of Bibliography suggests their It also required the creation of new formal structures of communicating individuals and the development of new tools and techniques for information handling. As it A version of some of the content of this article appeared in Rayward emerged, it found formal expression in a considerable (1994). volume of special publications that ranged from, and were often mixtures of, practical manuals and guides, theoretiq 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.