Otlet, Paul (1868-1944)
Belgian lawyer, the founding father of documentation. He created the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) and introduced in Europe of the standard American 3x5 inch index card (cf., catalog card) used in most library catalogs around the world until the introduction of OPACs in the 1980s.

Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world’s knowledge, culminating in two books, the Traité de documentation (1934) and Monde: Essai d'universalisme (1935). He and Henri La Fontaine founded Institut International de Bibliographie in 1895 which later became the International Federation for Documentation and Information (FID).
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