The Mundaneum through the international press

'The Web that time forgot’, ‘The Mundaneum, Paper Google’, ‘Networks of knowledge decades before Google’… The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and today, even Google, recognise Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine’s Mundaneum as the precursor of the Internet and the organisation of a network of knowledge.

READ THE PRESS REVIEW ABOUT THE REOPENING 2015 AND THE EXHIBITION MAPPING KNOWLEDGE

On 13 March 2012, the Mundaneum and Google announced the start of their collaboration in the presence of Belgium’s Prime Minister. In less than 24 hours, the information had gone around the globe, from Pittsburgh to Bangkok… and the Mundaneum entered a new era of communication… Few months later, it was the World Science Festival from New-York that made the buzz: " The idea of the Internet is Belgian!", recognizing Paul Otlet as the father of the concept.

At the very beginning of October 2012 the exhibit "Renaissance 2.0: a journey through the origins of the web" was launched and many partners attended (Google, The Computer History Museum of Mountain View/California, ...).

On 21st of February 2013 Mundaneum and Google announced their partnership expanded ! The Mundaneum is the first belgian partner to get to the Google Cultural Institute, an international platform including partners such as Nelson Mandela or Yad Vashem memory centers.

In June 2013, the Universal Bibliographic Repertory of the Mundaneum was officially registered in the Unesco Registry "Memory of the World".

In June 2014, the author of "The web time forgot" (New York Times),  Alex Wright publishes a book at Oxford University Press (USA) placing Paul Otlet in the genesis of our Information Age: "Cataloging the world: Paul Otlet and the Birth of Information age" - read the international press review.