The Mundaneum. Machine for thinking the world
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”.
Available in French, Dutch, and English.
Authors
Jacques Gillen – Stéphanie Manfroid – Aurélie Montignie – Justine Stragier
Preface by Alex Wright
L’Heure a sonné. Regards contemporains sur les écrits pacifistes d’Henri La Fontaine
The Time has Come. Contemporary perspectives on the pacifist writings of Henri La Fontaine.
“The time has come for peoples to choose between maintaining age-old animosities, ancestral prejudices and bitter jealousies, and the unspeakable anguish and bloodthirsty results. The time has come to establish a world community based on the rule of law and mutual trust.” – Henri La Fontaine.
For the first time, this book brings together the pacifist writings of Henri La Fontaine (1854-1943), winner of the 1913 Nobel Peace Prize. From the late 19th century to World War II, this Belgian socialist was a leading light in the pacifist movement. President of the International Peace Bureau and a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, he worked for peace in a number of pacifist organisations, Freemason circles, within his own political party, and in the feminist movement. For La Fontaine, peace required a profound change in human and international relations, and the construction of a more egalitarian and collective society. He was internationally acclaimed and travelled the world defending his ideas wherever he could.
This anthology includes articles, speeches and unpublished texts from the Mundaneum’s collections, of which La Fontaine was one of the founders and where his archives are kept. Contributions from a number of specialists shed light on the context in which these texts were written and their enduring relevance.
Co-published by the Mundaneum and the Henri La Fontaine Foundation, edited by Jacques Gillen and Daniel Sotiaux.
Contributors
Carl Bouchard – Monique Chemillier-Gendreau – Ahmet Insel – Michel Marbeau – Pierre Van den Dungen – Jacob Zollmann
This publication is only available in French.
D’une guerre à l’autre. Correspondance entre deux pacifistes: Henri La Fontaine et Henri Golay
From One War to Another. The correspondence exchanged between two pacifists, Henri La Fontaine and Henri Golay
From 1912 until World War II, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Henri La Fontaine and President of the International Peace Bureau, and Henri Golay, its Secretary General, exchanged thousands of pages of correspondence. Their letters reflect the hopes nourished by pacifists after 1918 and the difficulties they encountered, which became greater and greater as the threats to peace multiplied during the inter-war period. Sometimes optimistic, sometimes discouraged, La Fontaine and Golay’s views are far more forthright than that which can be found in their official speeches and writing. Their correspondence gives us an intimate insight into their thoughts and views, as well as the astonishing topicality of their exchanges.
The letters in this book were selected, presented and annotated by Jacques Gillen, a history graduate from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. As an archivist at the Mundaneum, Gillen is responsible for the collections relating to pacifism and anarchism, as well as Henri La Fontaine’s archives.
Published by the Henri La Fontaine Foundation
This publication is only available in French.
Paul Otlet – Le livre sur le livre. Traité de documentation
Paul Otlet – The Book about Books. A Treaty on Documentation
Paul Otlet is considered to be the founding father of information sciences. A “Treaty on Documentation” is considered to be a fundamental and seminal work. “The Book about Books” (1934) is the culmination of his tireless work to collect, classify and share knowledge. Otlet offers a remarkable synthesis of knowledge about books and documents, while at the same time anticipating the internet and hypertext.
“Here, you will not find any books on the desk, but rather a screen within reach of a telephone. Over there, in the distance, a huge building houses all the books and information. On the screen, the answer to the question asked by telephone can be read out.”
Prefaces written by Benoît Peeters – Sylvie Fayet-Scribe – Alex Wright
Published by Impressions Nouvelles.
This publication is only available in French.
Henri La Fontaine, Prix Nobel de la paix en 1913. Un Belge épris de justice
Henri La Fontaine, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1913. A Belgian with an abiding passion for justice
Henri La Fontaine (1854-1943), an iconic Belgian figure of the late 19th and early 20th century and a leading light in pacifism campaigned tirelessly for the development of international law. He envisaged the League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations Organization), with which he would be associated when it was created after World War I. In 1913, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his many national and international activities, particularly as President of the International Peace Bureau. As a politician, La Fontaine joined the Socialist movement as soon as the Belgian Workers’ Party was founded, and was elected to the Senate where he served as Vice-President. An ardent defender of women’s rights, he was conscious of the status of women and was involved in a number of movements campaigning for their emancipation. A freethinker and Freemason, he contributed to the acceptance of women into Belgian Freemasonry. A passionate bibliographer, with Paul Otlet he founded the Mundaneum, a place where all the world’s knowledge was to be united so that peace could be born out of knowledge.
Authors
Jérôme Adant – Colin Archer – Henri Bartholomeeusen – Marinette Bruwier – Pierre Galand – Verdiana Grossi – Jean-Michel Guieu – Daniel Laqua – Bruno Liesen – Valérie Piette – Wouter Van Acker – Gwenaël Vande Vijver – Christophe Verbruggen
Published by Éditions Racine
This publication is only available in French.
Mundaneum. Archives of knowledge
The Archives of Knowledge was published in 2008 by Paul Otlet’s first biographer, W. Boyd Rayward, Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois. It presents the history of the Mundaneum and the archives currently housed there, Otlet and La Fontaine’s incredible legacy.
The book was published by the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Paul Otlet (1868-1944). Architecte du savoir, artisan de paix
Paul Otlet (1868-1944). Architect of Knowledge and Peacemaker
Paul Otlet (1868-1944), a leading figure in information science, continues to fascinate. His innovative achievements span fields as diverse as bibliography, photography, schematics, encyclopaedias and museum design. He anticipated the arrival of the internet before World War II and, with his trusted friend Henri La Fontaine (winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913), laid the foundations of the Mundaneum, a kind of ‘paper Google’ with a pacifist aim. As a dedicated utopian, he worked tirelessly to build an ideal society and, with the help of Le Corbusier, designed a project for a World City. In this book, specialists from a variety of backgrounds discuss these issues. Their contribution sheds a whole new light on this major figure of the early 20th century.
Authors
Jean-François Crombois – Robert Estivals – Sylvie Fayet-Scribe – Jacques Gillen – Luce Lebart – François Mairesse – Stéphanie Manfroid – Valérie Montens – Warden Boyd Rayward – Wouter Van Acker – Pierre Van Den Dungen – Charles van den Heuvel
Published by Impressions Nouvelles, under the direction of Jacques Gillen
This publication is only available in French.
Le Mundaneum. Les archives de la connaissance
The Mundaneum. The Archives of Knowledge
This book was published in 2008 to mark the tenth anniversary of the Mundaneum’s exhibition space. Created in 1895 by one of the founding fathers of bibliography, Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Henri La Fontaine (1854-1943), the project aimed to unite the world’s knowledge under one roof. The Mundaneum became a universal archives centre and, in the first half of the 20th century, the cradle of international humanist institutions dedicated to the pursuit knowledge and universal brotherhood.
During the 20th century, the Mundaneum’s vast collections were housed in various locations in Brussels, including at the Cinquantenaire. Located in Mons since 1998, the Mundaneum has become a centre for exhibitions and debate. In the age of the internet and Wikipedia, it is more important than ever to showcase this heritage — and this guide has been designed to help you do that.
Authors
Raphaèle Cornille – Stéphanie Manfroid – Manuela Valentino
Published by Impressions Nouvelles
Out of stock*
Henri La Fontaine. Tracé(s) d’une vie
Henri La Fontaine. Trace(s) of a Life
In 1913, Henri La Fontaine was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. His project led him to envisage and participate in the creation of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations Organization. In the interests of peace, he contributed to the creation of the International Bibliography Office in 1895. As part of this approach, La Fontaine and Paul Otlet helped build the Mundaneum, a place where all the world’s knowledge could be united with the aim of fostering world peace and universal understanding. Together, they developed the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC).
Despite coming from a liberal background, he embraced a political career under the banner of socialism and campaigned for universal suffrage. Vice-president of the Belgian Senate, this Freemason travelled the world outside the Temple to spread his pacifist views. Worshipful Master of Philanthropic Friends, he was also instrumental in the creation of the mixed (i.e. men and women) Masonic Order Le Droit Humain (The Human Right) in Belgium. Conscious of women’s rights, he also worked with his sister Léonie to campaign for women’s emancipation. A brilliant all-rounder, he published numerous articles and books on legal, literary and political issues. Through his other activities — bibliography, music and mountaineering — he remains above all a man of peace.
This book is the first work to explore the different facets of this encyclopaedic spirit.
Authors
Marinette Bruwier – Jean-Paul Deplus – Nicole Haesenne – Hervé Hasquin – Suzanne Lecocq – Daniel Lefèbvre – Nadine Lubelski-Bernard – Stéphanie Manfroid – Gwenaël Van de Vijver
Out of stock*
1895-1995. Cent ans de l’Office international de bibliographie. Les prémisses du Mundaneum
1895-1995. One Hundred Years of the International Office of Bibliography. The early days of the Mundaneum
Celebrating one hundred years of the International Bibliography Office means highlighting the work of two exceptional men, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine, whose vision of events and ideas was international and included the creation of a universal bibliographic directory and international archives foundations (from 1920 onwards) under one roof, namely the World Palace – Mundaneum. The Mundaneum’s reputation extended beyond Belgium’s borders for many decades to come.
Authors
Paul Aron – Marinette Bruwier – Jean-François Crombois – Jean-François Füeg – Jean-Jacques Heirwegh – Jacques Hellemans – Christian L’Hoest – Nadine Lubelski-Bernard – Christine Piérard – Valérie Piette – Josiane Roelants-Abraham – Sven Steffens – Gabriel Thoveron – Jeffrey Tyssens – Erik van Binsbergen – Georges Van Slype
Out of stock*
Un Internet de papier. Le Mundaneum
A Paper Internet. The Mundaneum
This short book, published in 1998, presents the Mundaneum’s history and collections.
Out of stock*
*Out of print books can be consulted in our reading room.
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