Summary:

At the turn of the 20th century, Paul Otlet and Henri la Fontaine started to dream of a different world: a world in which knowledge would be accessible to all as a path towards world peace. They created the Mundaneum in order to gather and disseminate knowledge. Through numerous projects that revolved around the transfer of knowledge, they sought to achieve their ideal of peace. Classifying, documenting, sharing, uniting and dreaming the world would lead them to imagine a World City entirely devoted to universal understanding.

Today, the Mundaneum is an internationally renowned archive and museum of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. It has been awarded the European Heritage Label and is listed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The universalist utopia it embodies continues to exist through a collection of 6 kilometres of documents and the humanist, pacifist and universal values that led to its creation.

This book invites you to discover this visionary adventure, as well as the men and women who have carried it forward: Paul Otlet, the father of information science and precursor of the Internet, Henri La Fontaine, Nobel Peace Prize winner, but also Léonie La Fontaine, one of the first Belgian feminists, and many others. To dive into the world of the Mundaneum is to enter the “machine for thinking the world”.

Details of the book:

Authors: Jacques Gillen, Stéphanie Manfroid, Aurélie Montignie, Justine Stragier

Preface: Alex Wright

Editor: Mundaneum

Publication date : November 2022

Language: EN

Number of page: 144

Format: 16 x 23 cm