Documentation Under Duress: The Joint Conference of the International Federation for Documentation (FID) and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB), Oxford-London, 1938

Muddiman, Dave

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/49313 Copy

Description

Title

Documentation Under Duress: The Joint Conference of the International Federation for Documentation (FID) and the Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (ASLIB), Oxford-London, 1938

Author(s)

Muddiman, Dave

Issue Date

2013

Keyword(s)

• International Federation for Documentation (FID)
• British Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux (Aslib)

Abstract

A joint conference of the International Federation for Documentation (FID) and Aslib (the British Association of Special Libraries and Information Bureaux) was held in Oxford and London in late September 1938. It attracted large numbers of international delegates and a cast of distinguished speakers from the world of documentation, as well as celebrities such as H. G. Wells. It is now mainly remembered because it coincided with the “Munich” crisis (September 15–30, 1938), a context that apparently caused great tension among delegates, especially in relation to the substantial contingent from Nazi Germany. However, this article, following a detailed analysis of conference presentations and debates, observes that it also marked something of a turning point in the history of documentation itself. The project of the early twentieth-century documentalists—the “universe of knowledge” and its international mobilization—was called into serious question by some speakers; a state of affairs intensified by the disintegration of international relations outside the conference doors. In the end, this article argues, the Oxford conference heralded the emergence of a new, mid–twentieth-century world information order shaped during World War II and focusing upon the primacy of national (and later) commercial interests. In 1938, the dreams and schemes of Wells, Otlet, and their followers began to be recognized, for the time being at least, as the illusions that maybe they always were.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ISSN

1559-0682

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/49313

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2013.0035

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Copyright 2013 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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