World Congress of Universal Documentation

The World Congress of Universal Documentation was held from 16 to 21 August 1937 in Paris, France. Delegates from 45 countries met to discuss means by which all of the world's information, in print, in manuscript, and in other forms, could be efficiently organized and made accessible.

The Congress, held at the Trocadéro under "the auspices" of the Institute Internationale de Bibliographie, was "the apotheosis" of a general movement in the 1930s towards the classification of the growing mass of information and the improvement of access to that information. For the first time in the history of information science, technological means were beginning to catch up with theoretical ends, and the discussions at the conference reflected that fact. Its participation in the Congress was one of the first projects of the American Documentation Institute (ADI). Participants in the conference discussed what has been more recently called "a continuously updated hypertext encyclopedia."Joseph Reagle sees many of the ideas considered at the conference as forerunners of some of the key goals and norms of .

The main resolution adopted by the congress proposed that microfilm be used to make information universally available.Watson Davis, chairman of the American delegation and president of the ADI, stated that the volume of information being produced created difficult problems of access and preservation, but that these could be solved by the use of microfilm. In his address to the Congress, Davis said:

Most immediate and practical to put into operation is the microfilming of material in libraries upon demand. It will become fashionable and economical to send a potential book borrower a little strip of microfilm for his permanent possession instead of the book and then badgering him to return it before he has had a chance to use it effectively. I believe that reading machines for microfilm will become as common as typewriters in studies and laboratories. If the principal libraries and information centers of the world will cooperate in such "bibliofilm services," as they are called, if they exchange orders and have essentially uniform methods, forms for ordering, standard microfilm format and production methods and comparable if not uniform prices, the resources of any library will be placed at the disposal of any scholar or scientist anywhere in the world. All the libraries cooperating will merge into one world library without loss of identity or individuality. The world's documentation will become available to even the most isolated and individualistic scholar.

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