Dokumentieren : die Arbeit am institutionellen Gedächtnis in Wissenschaft, Wirtschaft und Verwaltung (1895-1945)

"Document", originally used as a juridical term for legal records and evidence, emerges as a new conceptual keyword for new memory practices at the end of the 19th century. The paper traces the visionary beginnings of the documentation movement by Paul Otlet and Henry La Fontaine through its culmination in the foundation of a central word memory agency (the "International Institute for Bibliography") and its decline at the eve of WWI to its transformation and professionalization in the 1930s. It analyzes how new working tools like the decimal classification, dossiers, abstracts, clippings, microfilm and photocopies initiate epistemic, technological and institutional shifts. It argues that these administrative tools are deeply embedded with novel concepts of temporality.  The idea of acceleration combined with the requirement to remain up-to-date makes the course of development seem unpredictable and the future appear open. At the turn to the twentieth century documentation is praised as a new, flexible and future-oriented memory practice for science, business and administration.  While documentation proofs to be successful in modernizing libraries, the effects on administration practices remain marginal until the end of WWII and mainly limited to Dutch municipalities.