Mundaneum, Archive museum in Mons, Belgium.
The Mundaneum is an archive museum in Mons housing six kilometers of systematically arranged documents and presenting knowledge through exhibitions archives and research materials. The collection shows different methods of information organization and documents the evolution of data handling over decades.
Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine founded this institution in 1910 with the goal of gathering universal knowledge and creating a global information center. The institution experienced several relocations and changes before finding its current location in Mons.
The name derives from the Latin word for world and reflects the attempt to gather all fields of knowledge under one roof. Visitors today see numerous card boxes and catalogues that show how people structured information before the digital age.
The museum occupies a converted 1930s department store on a paved street in Mons, entered through a large arched doorway with dark double doors; a red banner hangs to its right. The white facade has a grey sloping roof with two rows of dormer windows and a curved central bay of three windows above the entrance. Inside, the exhibition space and the archive centre of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation share the building.
In June 2013, UNESCO inscribed the Mundaneum's Universal Bibliographic Repertory in its Memory of the World Register. The repertory was the card catalogue behind the project, and the register listing recognises the documentary value of those millions of index cards rather than any European heritage label.
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