A Belgian organization created in 1910 that aimed to collate all of the world's knowledge on small index cards. People worldwide would then send mail or telegrams to the workers asking questions, and the answers would then be looked up in the cards by a team of workers. In this regard, it is often viewed as a primitive analogue version of the internet, where people could submit a search query about anything in the world and eventually receive an answer.

The project suffered from cutbacks and relocation due to the world wars. At its peak it contained approximately 12 million index cards.