The information age, long before the internet

A few days ago, The New York Times ran a story about how libraries in New York were helping to provide WiFi in parts of the city.  Obviously the link between libraries and information is long standing. 

But imagine that in the 1930’s, long, long before the world wide wide was even a kernel in the mind of Tim Berners-Lee or others, the idea of interconnected information, of hyperlinks, of understanding the connections between information and ideas and then trying to pull them all together in a patchwork of analog technology.  

That’s what Paul Otlay envisioned, way head of his time.  His story, long forgotten and ignored has now come back to life in the work of my guest Alex Wright in Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age.

My conversation with Alex Wright: