Mons, Belgium
Rue de Nimy 76
N/A
+32 65315343
Good for kidsToiletsNo restaurant
Assisted listening devicesWheelchair-accessible entranceWheelchair-accessible liftWheelchair-accessible toilet
Fascinating early 20th century attempt to capture all human knowledge by two humanists (Henri de la Fontaine - Nobel Peace prize winner & co-founder of the League of Nations - and Paul Otlet, an imaginative visual thinker who foresaw the internet & Zoom and developed a universal classification system. Like an early search engine before computrs existed. Exhibition housed in an old Art Deco department store, only a short walk from the Mons Grand Place. Go!
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You immediately understand why this is part of UNESCO heritage. It's simply beautiful and impressive. Don't forget to use the screen on your left-hand side as you've entered. It gives you a clear explanation of the classification system they use on all of the information cards.
The Mundaneum is an enormous index card system created by Paul Otlet in the early 20th century. He tried to catalogue and summarize all the human knowledge. And the only tools available to him were cards and cabinets. Each piece of information, eg a journal article or a book, is summarized on one index card. And three copies of this same card are stored in three pigeonholes — variously sorted according to names and theme, for example. The public could write a letter to “search for” a topic by a certain author. And the information on the “retrieved” cards are sent back to them in a letter. This small museum now houses three floors of cabinets containing his cards. At the entrance, an interactive device shows how his system worked.
Just down the street from the Grand-Place is the Mundaneum museum. It documents how a group of researchers wanted to keep a record of all written knowledge... by writing out library card catalog entries for each book! A reminder of times before Google was available!
Superb place.
In this museum you encounter an early paper version of the internet. A real cool concept to think about. The permanent exposition is super tiny and free so take a look when you're around. An atlas Obscura recommendation by the way. There are other temporary expos as well
History of paper internet with visualization
This is where all this has started. The new explorers gathering space. The internet...
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