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84-793: Field cooperated with the grand information efforts of Belgians Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine who had founded the Institut International de Bibliographie (IIB) in Brussels in 1895, later renamed as (in English) the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID). In its early years the Concilium operated as an affiliate of the IIB. Field is credited with persuading Otlet and La Fontaine to adopt

168-741: A non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development since December 1925 and joined UNESCO in 1969, after having established a joint commission in 1952. After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations , the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943,

252-477: A Commission to study the feasibility of having nations freely share cultural, educational and scientific achievements. This new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC), was created in 1922 and counted such figures as Henri Bergson , Albert Einstein , Marie Curie , Robert A. Millikan , and Gonzague de Reynold among its members (being thus a small commission of

336-482: A Preparatory Commission was established. The Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946 — the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state. The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Julian Huxley to Director-General. United States Army colonel, university president and civil rights advocate Blake R. Van Leer joined as

420-679: A United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF) was convened in London from 1 to 16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented. The idea of UNESCO was largely developed by Rab Butler , the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development. At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, and

504-663: A biennium, as well as links to relevant programmatic and financial documents. These two distinct sets of information are published on the IATI registry, respectively based on the IATI Activity Standard and the IATI Organization Standard. There have been proposals to establish two new UNESCO lists. The first proposed list will focus on movable cultural heritage such as artifacts, paintings, and biofacts. The list may include cultural objects, such as

588-523: A biography of Otlet (1975) that was translated into Russian (1976) and Spanish (1996, 1999, and 2005). In 1985, Belgian academic André Canonne raised the possibility of recreating the Mundaneum as an archive and museum devoted to Otlet and others associated with them; his idea initially was to house it in the Belgian city of Liège . Cannone, with substantial help from others, eventually managed to open

672-421: A book, " La Fin de la Guerre " ("The End of War") that defined a "World Charter of Human Rights" as the basis for an international federation. In 1910, Otlet and La Fontaine first envisioned a "city of knowledge", which Otlet originally named the " Palais Mondial " ("World Palace"), that would serve as a central repository for the world's information. In 1919, soon after the end of World War I, they convinced

756-498: A declaration of anthropologists (among them was Claude Lévi-Strauss ) and other scientists in 1950 and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice . In 1955, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems". It rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela . One of

840-485: A fellow lawyer with shared interests in bibliography and international relations, and the two became good friends. They were commissioned in 1892 by Belgium's Societé des Sciences sociales et politiques (Society of social and political sciences) to create bibliographies for various of the social sciences; they spent three years doing this. In 1895, they discovered the Dewey Decimal Classification ,

924-552: A full member. As a result, the United States withdrew its funding, which had accounted for about 22% of UNESCO's budget. Israel also reacted to Palestine's admittance to UNESCO by freezing Israeli payments to UNESCO and imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority , stating that Palestine's admittance would be detrimental "to potential peace talks". Two years after stopping payment of its dues to UNESCO,

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1008-547: A global movement in 1990 to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults. In 2000, World Education Forum in Dakar , Senegal, led member governments to commit for achieving basic education for all in 2015. The World Declaration on Higher Education was adopted by UNESCO's World Conference on Higher Education on 9 October 1998, with the aim of setting global standards on the ideals and accessibility of higher education . UNESCO's early activities in culture included

1092-757: A halt due to the outbreak of World War I . Otlet returned to Belgium, but quickly fled after it became occupied by the Germans; he spent the majority of the war in Paris and various cities in Switzerland . Both his sons fought in the Belgian army, and one of them, Jean, died during the war in the Battle of the Yser . Otlet spent much of the war trying to bring about peace, and the creation of multinational institutions that he felt could avert future wars. In 1914, he published

1176-674: A huge international conference, Otlet and Henri La Fontaine created the Central Office of International Associations, which was renamed to the Union of International Associations in 1910, and which is still located in Brussels . They also created a great international center called at first Palais Mondial (World Palace), later, the Mundaneum to house the collections and activities of their various organizations and institutes. Otlet and La Fontaine were peace activists who endorsed

1260-416: A law degree on 15 July 1890. He married his step-cousin, Fernande Gloner, soon afterward, on 9 December 1890. He then clerked with famed lawyer Edmond Picard , a friend of his father's. Otlet soon became dissatisfied with his legal career, and began to take an interest in bibliography . His first published work on the subject was the essay "Something about bibliography", written in 1892. In it he expressed

1344-421: A library classification system that had been invented in 1876. They decided to try to expand this system to cover the classification of facts that Otlet had previously imagined. They wrote to the system's creator, Melvil Dewey , asking for permission to modify his system in this way; he agreed, so long as their system was not translated into English. They began work on this expansion soon afterwards and thus created

1428-469: A love of reading and books. At the age of six, a temporary decline in his father's wealth caused the family to move to Paris . At the age of 11, Paul went to school for the first time, a Jesuit school in Paris, where he stayed for the next three years. The family then returned to Brussels, and Paul studied at the prestigious Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels. In 1894, his father became a senator in

1512-634: A member as well. The Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the executive board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity. This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in

1596-444: A platform for the dialogue between cultures and provide a forum for international debate". Since March 2006 it has been available free online, with limited printed issues. Its articles express the opinions of the authors which are not necessarily the opinions of UNESCO. There was a hiatus in publishing between 2012 and 2017. In 1950, UNESCO initiated the quarterly review Impact of Science on Society (also known as Impact ) to discuss

1680-521: A utopian city dedicated to international institutions was largely inspired by the contemporary publication in 1913 by the Norwegian-American sculptor Hendrik Christian Andersen and the French architect Ernest Hébrard of an impressive series of Beaux-Arts plans for a World Centre of Communication (1913). For the design of his World City, Otlet collaborated with several architects. In this way

1764-894: A whole series of designs for the World City was developed. The most elaborated plans were: the design of a Mundaneum (1928) and a World City (1929) by Le Corbusier in Geneva next to the palace of the League of Nations, by Victor Bourgeois in Tervuren (1931) next to the Congo Museum, again by Le Corbusier (in collaboration with Huib Hoste ) on the left bank in Antwerp (1933), by Maurice Heymans in Chesapeake Bay near Washington (1935), and by Stanislas Jassinski and Raphaël Delville on

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1848-560: Is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It has 194 member states and 12 associate members, as well as partners in the non-governmental , intergovernmental and private sector . Headquartered in Paris , France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions. UNESCO

1932-499: Is another example of an early major UNESCO project in the field of natural sciences. In 1968, UNESCO organized the first intergovernmental conference aimed at reconciling the environment and development, a problem that continues to be addressed in the field of sustainable development . The main outcome of the 1968 conference was the creation of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme . UNESCO has been credited with

2016-454: Is corrupted and manipulated by Israel's enemies... we are not going to be a member of an organisation that deliberately acts against us". 2023 saw Russia excluded from the executive committee for the first time, after failing to get sufficient votes. The United States stated its intent to rejoin UNESCO in 2023, 5 years after leaving, and to pay its $ 600 million in back dues. The United States

2100-461: Is governed by the General Conference composed of member states and associate members, which meets biannually to set the agency's programs and budget. It also elects members of the executive board, which manages UNESCO's work, and appoints every four years a Director-General, who serves as UNESCO's chief administrator. UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect

2184-844: The Acropolis of Athens (Greece). The organization's work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. In 1976, the World Heritage Committee was established and the first sites were included on the World Heritage List in 1978. Since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 (Convention for

2268-492: The BBC Archives . In 1906, with his father Édouard near death and his businesses falling apart, Paul and his brother and five step-siblings formed a company, Otlet Frères ("Otlet Brothers") to try to manage these businesses, which included mines and railways. Paul, though he was consumed with his bibliographic work, became president of the company. In 1907, Édouard died, and the family struggled to maintain all parts of

2352-769: The Belgian Congo by drawing together "all the ne’er-do-wells of the various tribes of the Colony, aside from some hundreds of labourers". The Palais Mondial was briefly shuttered in 1922, due to lack of support from the government of Prime Minister Georges Theunis , but was reopened after lobbying from Otlet and La Fontaine. Otlet renamed the Palais Mondial to the Mundaneum in 1924. The RBU steadily grew to 13 million index cards in 1927; by its final year, 1934, it had reached more than 15 million. Index cards were stored in custom-designed cabinets, and indexed according to

2436-689: The Belgian Senate for the Catholic Party (until 1900). His father remarried to Valerie Linden, daughter of famed botanist Jean Jules Linden ; the two eventually had five additional children. The family travelled often during this time, going on holidays and business trips to Italy , France and Russia . Otlet was educated at the Catholic University of Leuven and at the Free University of Brussels , where he earned

2520-566: The Concilium Bibliographicum for Zoology, and completed this initial publication in 1907. The system defines not only detailed subject classifications, but also an algebraic notation for referring to the intersection of several subjects; for example, the notation "31:[622+669](485)" refers to the statistics of mining and metallurgy in Sweden . The UDC is an example of an analytico-synthetic classification, i.e., it permits

2604-781: The International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia , launched in 1960. The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam . During the 20-year campaign, 22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco), Kathmandu (Nepal), Borobudur (Indonesia) and

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2688-1002: The Jōmon Venus of Japan, the Mona Lisa of France, the Gebel el-Arak Knife of Egypt , The Ninth Wave of Russia, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük of Turkey, the David (Michelangelo) of Italy, the Mathura Herakles of India, the Manunggul Jar of the Philippines, the Crown of Baekje of South Korea, The Hay Wain of the United Kingdom and the Benin Bronzes of Nigeria. The second proposed list will focus on

2772-474: The Nobel Peace Prize in 1913. Otlet was born in Brussels , Belgium on 23 August 1868, the oldest child of Édouard Otlet (Brussels 13 June 1842- Blanquefort , France , 20 October 1907) and Maria (née Van Mons). His father, Édouard, was a wealthy businessman who made his fortune selling trams around the world. His mother died in 1871 at the age of 24, when Otlet was three. Through his mother, he

2856-428: The United Nations member states (except Israel and Liechtenstein ), as well as Cook Islands , Niue and Palestine . The United States and Israel left UNESCO on 31 December 2018, but the United States rejoined in 2023. As of June 2023 , there have been 11 Directors-General of UNESCO since its inception – nine men and two women. The 11 Directors-General of UNESCO have come from six regions within

2940-573: The Universal Decimal Classification . During this time, Otlet and his wife then had two sons, Marcel and Jean, in quick succession. Otlet founded the Institut International de Bibliographie (IIB) in 1895, later renamed as (in English) the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID). In 1894, he had Art Nouveau architect Octave van Rysselberghe build his mansion in Brussels,

3024-474: The scientific method , an objective view of the world can be gained. According to W. Boyd Rayward, his ideas placed him culturally and intellectually in the Belle Époque period of pre–World War I Europe, a period of great "cultural certitude". Otlet's writings have sometimes been called prescient of the current World Wide Web . His vision of a great network of knowledge was centered on documents and included

3108-502: The " Repertoire Bibliographique Universel " (RBU) which utilized 3x5 inch index cards , used commonly in library catalogs around the world (now largely displaced by the advent of the online public access catalog (OPAC)). Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world's knowledge, culminating in two books, the Traité de Documentation (1934) and Monde: Essai d'universalisme (1935). In 1907, following

3192-622: The 75 x 125 mm card size. He was also responsible for developing at the Concilium the Zoology sections of the Universal Decimal Classification. The Concilium and the IIB faced hostilities arising from nationalistic competition among England, France and Germany, but by 1903 the Concilium had sent some 13,000,000 cards to over 600 subscribers in Europe and North and South America. It was, however, difficult to make

3276-549: The Concilium files as the number of science publications increased. Already on its last legs, the outbreak of war in 1939 led to the closing of the Concilium in 1940. There were no attempts to revive it when peace returned. This article about an international organization is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Paul Otlet Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet ( / ɒ t ˈ l eɪ / ; French: [pɔl maʁi ɡilɛ̃ ɔtlɛ] ; 23 August 1868 – 10 December 1944)

3360-658: The Concilium financially viable and just as it was on the verge of becoming self-sustaining the outbreak of war in 1914 forced it to suspend operations. After the war, as Herbert Field was overcoming objections to his system by applied scientists, such as those represented by the National Research Council (United States) who favored a simpler and less expensive system based on volunteers composing abstracts of articles (as in Biological Abstracts ) and saw no need for 'old knowledge', and just as he

3444-838: The Directors-General of UNESCO since its establishment in 1946 is as follows: This is the list of the sessions of the UNESCO General Conference held since 1946: Ahmet Altay Cengizer Biennial elections are held, with 58 elected representatives holding office for four years. [REDACTED]   Finland [REDACTED]   Portugal [REDACTED]   Turkey [REDACTED]   Albania [REDACTED]   Belarus [REDACTED]   Bulgaria [REDACTED]   Cuba [REDACTED]   Grenada [REDACTED]   Jamaica [REDACTED]   Saint Lucia [REDACTED]   Saint Vincent and

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3528-539: The League of Nations essentially centred on Western Europe ). The International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) was then created in Paris in September 1924, to act as the executing agency for the ICIC. However, the onset of World War II largely interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations. As for private initiatives, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) began to work as

3612-433: The Mundaneum as best as they could, and there it remained until it was forced to move again in 1972, well after Otlet's death. The World City or Cité Mondiale is a utopian vision by Paul Otlet of a city which like a universal exhibition brings together all the leading institutions of the world. The World City would radiate knowledge to the rest of the world and construct peace and universal cooperation. Otlet’s idea to design

3696-836: The Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage ) and 2005 ( Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions ). An intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951 led to the creation of the European Council for Nuclear Research , which was responsible for establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) later on, in 1954. Arid Zone programming, 1948–1966,

3780-431: The United States and Israel lost UNESCO voting rights in 2013 without losing the right to be elected; thus, the United States was elected as a member of the executive board for the period 2016–19. In 2019, Israel left UNESCO after 69 years of membership, with Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon writing: "UNESCO is the body that continually rewrites history, including by erasing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem... it

3864-452: The Universal Decimal Classification. The collection also grew to include files (including letters, reports, newspaper articles, etc.) and images, contained in separate rooms; the index cards were meant to catalog all of these as well. The Mundaneum eventually contained 100,000 files and millions of images. In 1934, the Belgian government again cut off funding for the project, and the offices were closed. (Otlet protested by keeping vigil outside

3948-602: The belief that books were an inadequate way to store information, because the arrangement of facts contained within them was an arbitrary decision on the part of the author, making individual facts difficult to locate. A better storage system, Otlet wrote in his essay, would be cards containing individual "chunks" of information, that would allow "all the manipulations of classification and continuous interfiling." In addition would be needed "a very detailed synoptic outline of knowledge" that could allow classification of all of these chunks of data. In 1891, Otlet met Henri La Fontaine ,

4032-445: The business. In April 1908, Paul Otlet and his wife began divorce proceedings. Otlet remarried in 1912, to Cato Van Nederhesselt. In 1913, La Fontaine won the Nobel Peace Prize , and invested his winnings into Otlet and La Fontaine's bibliographic ventures, which were suffering from lack of funding. Otlet journeyed to the United States in early 1914 to try to get additional funding from the U.S. Government, but his efforts soon came to

4116-412: The commission, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Seán MacBride ). The same year, UNESCO created the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), a multilateral forum designed to promote media development in developing countries. In 1993, UNESCO's General Conference endorsed the Windhoek Declaration on media independence and pluralism, which led the UN General Assembly to declare

4200-429: The date of its adoption, 3 May, as World Press Freedom Day . Since 1997, UNESCO has awarded the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize every 3 May. UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011. Laws passed in the United States after Palestine applied for UNESCO and WHO membership in April 1989 mean that the United States cannot contribute financially to any UN organization that accepts Palestine as

4284-451: The development of both the League of Nations and the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, which was later merged into UNESCO . At several occasions, Otlet published racist statements dressed up as scientific facts, starting at the beginning of his career with L'Afrique Aux Noirs (1888) where he argued that white people or 'westernized' blacks were to be tasked with 'civilising' Africa. Similarly, in Monde (1935), near

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4368-422: The diffusion of national science bureaucracies. In the field of communication, the "free flow of ideas by word and image" has been in UNESCO's constitution since it was established, following the experience of the Second World War when control of information was a factor in indoctrinating populations for aggression. In the years immediately following World War II, efforts were concentrated on reconstruction and on

4452-533: The early 1990s, new interest arose in Otlet's speculations and theories about the organization of knowledge, the use of information technologies, and globalization. His 1934 masterpiece, the Traité de documentation , was reprinted in 1989 by the Centre de Lecture publique de la Communauté française in Belgium. (Neither the Traité nor its companion work, "Monde" (World) has been translated into English so far.) In 1990 Professor W. Boyd Rayward published an English translation of some of Otlet's writings. He also published

4536-447: The early work of UNESCO in the education field was a pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, which was launched in 1947. Following this project one of expert missions to other countries, included a 1949 mission to Afghanistan. UNESCO recommended in 1948 that Member countries should make free primary education compulsory and universal. The World Conference on Education for All , in Jomtien , Thailand, started

4620-441: The end of his life, he claimed the biological superiority of white people. His interest in advancing 'The African Issue' was fuelled by a firm conviction of the superiority of European culture and intelligence which fitted the Enlightenment project that he was dedicated to. Otlet’s organisational support to the 1921 Pan-African Congress at the Palais Mondial (later: Mundaneum ) therefore needs to be considered in connection with

4704-423: The government of Belgium to give them the space and funding for this project, arguing that it would help Belgium bolster its bid to house the League of Nations headquarters. They were given space in the left wing of the Palais du Cinquantenaire , a government building in Brussels . They then hired staff to help add to their Universal Bibliographic Repertory. In 1921 Otlet wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois offering

4788-411: The identification of needs for means of mass communication around the world. UNESCO started organizing training and education for journalists in the 1950s. In response to calls for a " New World Information and Communication Order " in the late 1970s, UNESCO established the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, which produced the 1980 MacBride report (named after the chair of

4872-529: The influence of science on society. The journal ceased publication in 1992. UNESCO also published Museum International Quarterly from the year 1948. UNESCO has official relations with 322 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Most of these are what UNESCO calls "operational"; a select few are "formal". The highest form of affiliation to UNESCO is "formal associate", and the 22 NGOs with formal associate (ASC) relations occupying offices at UNESCO are: The institutes are specialized departments of

4956-405: The internationalist politics of the League of Nations and its International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (the forerunner of UNESCO ). Otlet and La Fontaine witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of information, resulting in the creation of new kinds of international organization. They saw in this organization an emerging global polity , and wished to help solidify it. La Fontaine won

5040-410: The left bank in Antwerp (1941). In these different designs the program of the World City stayed more or less fixed, containing a World Museum, a World University, a World Library and Documentation Centre, Offices for the International Associations, Offices or Embassies for the Nations, an Olympic Centre, a residential area, and a park. Otlet integrated new media, as they were invented, into his vision of

5124-401: The linking of one concept to another. Although some have described it as faceted, it is not, though there are some faceted elements in it. A truly faceted classification consists solely of simple concepts; there are many compound concepts listed in the UDC. It is still used by many libraries and bibliographic services outside the English-speaking world, and in some non-traditional contexts such as

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5208-450: The locked offices, but to no avail.) The collection remained untouched within those offices, however, until 1940, when Germany invaded Belgium. Requisitioning the Mundaneum's quarters to hold a collection of Third Reich art and destroying substantial amounts of its collections in the process, the Germans forced Otlet and his colleagues to find a new home for the Mundaneum. In a large but decrepit building in Leopold Park they reconstituted

5292-437: The master copy. At various times between 1900 and 1914, attempts were made to send full copies of the RBU to cities such as Paris, Washington, D.C. and Rio de Janeiro ; however, difficulties in copying and transportation meant that no city received more than a few hundred thousand cards. In 1904, Otlet and La Fontaine began to publish their classification scheme, which they termed the Universal Decimal Classification . The UDC

5376-436: The necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China , the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), held in San Francisco from April to June 1945,

5460-415: The networked knowledge-base of the future. In the early 1900s, Otlet worked with engineer Robert Goldschmidt on storing bibliographic data on microfilm (then known as "micro-photography"). These experiments continued into the 1920s, and by the late 1920s he attempted along with colleagues to create an encyclopedia printed entirely on microfilm, known as the Encyclopaedia Microphotica Mundaneum , which

5544-450: The new Mundaneum in Mons , Belgium in 1998. This museum is still in operation, and contains the personal papers of Otlet and La Fontaine and the archives of the various organizations they created along with other collections important to the modern history of Belgium. Otlet scholar W. Boyd Rayward has written that Otlet's thinking is a product of the 19th century and the philosophy of positivism , which holds that, through careful study and

5628-511: The notions of hyperlinks , search engines , remote access, and social networks —although these notions were described by different names. In 1934, Otlet laid out this vision of the computer and internet in what he called "Radiated Library" vision. Paul Otlet's grave is located in the Etterbeek Cemetery, in Wezembeek-Oppem , Flemish Brabant, Belgium. UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO ; pronounced / j uː ˈ n ɛ s k oʊ / )

5712-582: The organization that support UNESCO's programme, providing specialized support for cluster and national offices. UNESCO awards 26 prizes in education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, communication and information as well as peace: International Days observed at UNESCO are provided in the table below: As of July 2023 , UNESCO has 194 member states and 12 associate members. Some members are not independent states and some members have additional National Organizing Committees from some of their dependent territories . UNESCO state parties are

5796-445: The organization's fields of competence. As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate, political and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War , the decolonization process, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union . Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with

5880-401: The organization: West Europe (5), Central America (1), North America (2), West Africa (1), East Asia (1), and East Europe (1). To date, there has been no elected Director-General from the remaining ten regions within UNESCO: Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and North Asia, Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, Australia-Oceania, and South America. The list of

5964-502: The racist statements that he published both before and after the event. In 1933, Otlet proposed building in Belgium near Antwerp a "gigantic neutral World City " to employ a massive number of workers, in order to alleviate the unemployment generated by the Great Depression . Otlet died in 1944, not long before the end of World War II, having seen his major project, the Mundaneum, shuttered, and having lost all his funding sources. According to Otlet scholar W. Boyd Rayward : And: In

6048-475: The requesters copies of the relevant index cards for each query; scholar Charles van den Heuvel has referred to the service as an "analog search engine ". By 1912, this service responded to over 1,500 queries a year. Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search. Otlet envisioned a copy of the RBU in each major city around the world, with Brussels holding

6132-454: The so-called Hotel Otlet . In 1895, Otlet and La Fontaine also began the creation of a collection of index cards, meant to catalog facts, that came to be known as the " Repertoire Bibliographique Universel " (RBU), or the "Universal Bibliographic Repertory". By the end of 1895 it had grown to 400,000 entries; later it would reach more than 15 million entries. In 1896, Otlet set up a fee-based service to answer questions by mail, by sending

6216-681: The use of the Palais Mondial for the 2nd Pan-African Congress . Although both Otlet and Fontaine offered a warm welcome to the Congress, these sentiments were not shared across all of Belgian society. The Brussels-based paper Neptune stated that the organisers – particularly the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People were funded by the Bolsheviks – and raised concern that it might lead to difficulties in

6300-462: The wake of World War II , the contributions of Otlet to the field of information science were lost sight of in the rising popularity of the ideas of American information scientists such as Vannevar Bush , Douglas Engelbart , Ted Nelson and by such theorists of information organization as Seymour Lubetzky . Beginning in the 1980s, and especially after the advent of the World Wide Web in

6384-515: The world's living species, such as the komodo dragon of Indonesia, the panda of China, the bald eagle of North American countries, the aye-aye of Madagascar, the Asiatic lion of India, the kākāpō of New Zealand, and the mountain tapir of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. UNESCO and its specialized institutions issue a number of magazines. Created in 1945, The UNESCO Courier magazine states its mission to "promote UNESCO's ideals, maintain

6468-419: Was a Belgian author, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist; predicting the arrival of the internet before World War II, he is among those considered to be the father of information science , a field he called "documentation". 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,

6552-584: Was a firm believer in international cooperation to promote both the spread of knowledge and peace between nations. A self-identified liberal, universalist and pacifist, his endeavor to catalog and classify is an expression of the commitment to the Eurocentric project to structure knowledge according to universal categories and taxonomies, of which the Universal Decimal Classification is an example. The Union of International Associations, which he had founded in 1907 with Henri La Fontaine, later participated to

6636-416: Was about to receive funding from America's Rockefeller Foundation, he died. The Concilium was left in the hands of Johannes Strohl, a rather stubborn European scientist who found himself in conflict with the foundation, with those who favored a new world science information system based on abstracts, and with his subscribers who objected to the increased prices he had to charge as well as to the unwieldy size of

6720-900: Was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations ' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation . UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the events of World War II , is to advance peace , sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objective through five major programme areas: education, natural sciences , social / human sciences , culture and communication/information. UNESCO sponsors projects that improve literacy , provide technical training and education, advance science, protect independent media and press freedom , preserve regional and cultural history , and promote cultural diversity . The organization prominently helps establish and secure World Heritage Sites of cultural and natural importance. UNESCO

6804-538: Was housed in the Mundaneum. In the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote about radio and television as other forms of conveying information, writing in the 1934 Traité de documentation that "one after another, marvellous inventions have immensely extended the possibilities of documentation." In the same book, he predicted that media that would convey feel, taste and smell would also eventually be invented, and that an ideal information-conveyance system should be able to handle all of what he called "sense-perception documents". Otlet

6888-549: Was originally based on Melvil Dewey's Decimal classification system. Otlet and La Fontaine contacted Melvil Dewey to inquire if they could modify the Dewey Decimal System to suit the parameters of their bibliographic project, namely, organizing information in the social and natural sciences. Dewey granted them permission as long as it substantially differed from his original version. They worked with numerous subject experts, for example with Herbert Haviland Field at

6972-594: Was readmitted by the UNESCO General Conference that July. UNESCO implements its activities through five programme areas: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information. UNESCO does not accredit institutions of higher learning. The UNESCO transparency portal has been designed to enable public access to information regarding the Organization's activities, such as its aggregate budget for

7056-517: Was related to the Van Mons family, a prosperous family, and to the Verhaeren family, of which Emile Verhaeren was one of the most important Belgian poets. His father kept him out of school, hiring tutors instead, until he was 11, believing that classrooms were a stifling environment. Otlet, as a child, had few friends, and played regularly only with his younger brother Maurice. He soon developed

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