Paul Otlet, A Forerunner for Us All

Paul Otlet, 1868-1944, was a Belgium pioneer in information sciences.

In 1895 he set about freeing the information in books from their bindings. He built a universal decimal classification and then figured out how that organized data could be explored, via"links" and a"web." In 1910 Otlet created a"radiated library" called the Mundameum in Brussels that managed search queries in a massive way until the Nazis destroyed the service.

Hat tip.