Today, the new Mundaneum reveals tantalising glimpses of a Web that might have been. Long rows of catalog drawers hold millions of Otlet’s index cards, pointing the way into a back-room archive brimming with books, posters, photos, newspaper clippings and all kinds of other artifacts. A team of full-time archivists have managed to catalog less than 10 percent of the collection.

The archive’s sheer sprawl reveals both the possibilities and the limits of Otlet’s original vision. “I think Otlet would have felt lost with the Internet,” said his biographer, Francoise Levie. Even with a small army of professional librarians, the original Mundaneum could never have accommodated the sheer volume of information produced on the Web today.
-ALEX WRIGHT (New York Times)