BIBLIOLOGICAL ROOTS OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND DISTANCE LEARNING 2

Abstract

The research focuses on library and information science pioneer Paul Otlet’s contribution to the philosophy of contemporary social networks and distance education. Research methods: systemicmedialogical approach to previous research in book science, library, information and documentation science, retrospective discursive and desktop analysis of documents, studies, and monographs. The study provides a chronological examination of the argumentation path followed by Otlet with regard to the document of “book” as a basic technology of the World Wide Web and the remote access to knowledge. The logic of the development of his projects has been established: by means of expanding the definition of “book”, he projects its future transformations in a descending gradation – from the “Universal Book of Knowledge” (in French: Le Livre universel de la Science) through a “machine to think with” (in French: machine à penser) to a breakdown into “Biblions” – the smallest building blocks of recorded knowledge. It has been confirmed that Otlet has laid the foundations of the concept of the online hypertextual environment and the multi-sensory interface by predicting the emergence of “sense-perception-documents” which can be read remotely. Paul Otlet’s contribution to the design of the Internet and online learning has been identified in the creation of what he envisaged in 1908 and 1934 as a hybrid reading room with a telephone and a TV set, and for remote servicing of learners by human librarians and bibliographers working with classified and catalogued “ontology”.