Patrick Wilson

Patrick Garland Wilson (December 29, 1927 – September 12, 2003) was a noted theorist of bibliographic control and philosopher of information who served at the University of California, Berkeley as professor and dean of the School of Librarianship (now the School of Information) there. Earlier in his career, Wilson worked in Berkeley campus libraries and taught philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Career

Wilson grew up in Santa Cruz, California, then studied philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley: AB, 1949 and PhD, 1960. He also completed a BLS in 1953 and worked in the University Library 1950-1959, latterly as a bibliographer in South Asia studies.

He is noted within the library and information science communities for his work on the philosophical underpinnings of bibliographic control, that is, the ways in which recorded knowledge is organized and the relationships between different documents and pieces of knowledge. He also did work on what he called "cognitive authority," which is the study of how people gain reputation and the authority of possessing knowledge in the eyes of other people. The American Society for Information Science and Technology conferred its highest honor, its Award of Merit, on him in 2001. In his acceptance remarks, Wilson commented:

"So for me information science and technology has been a fascinating combination of engineering, an odd kind of materials science and social epistemology. Social epistemology with a focus on textual objects and with an eye on the actual and possible roles of information systems is a productive approach to our field. There is a huge and rich supply of real problems out there still awaiting exploration, of real importance and endless fascination, and I urge others to take them on." (On Accepting the ASIST Award of Merit. Bulletin of the Association for Information Science January 2002, https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bult.228

Published works

For a list of his publications see Patrick Wilson Bibliography.

Wilson was the author of three books:

• Wilson, Patrick (1968). Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control. University of California Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-520-03515-7.
• Wilson, Patrick (1977). Public Knowledge, Private Ignorance: Toward a Library and Information Policy. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-8371-9485-1.
• Wilson, Patrick (1983). Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 210. ISBN 978-0-313-23763-8.

Further reading

• Patrick Wilson. Philosopher of Information: an Eclectic Imprint on Berkeley's School of Librarianship, 1965-1991. Ed by Laura McCreery. The Regents of the University of California. Library School Oral History Series, 2000. [1]
• White, Howard D. 2019. “Patrick Wilson”. ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization, eds. Birger Hjørland and Claudio Gnoli, [2] Originally appeared in Knowledge Organization 46, no. 4 (2019): 279-307. [3]
• Professor emeritus Patrick Wilson, librarian and philosopher, dies at 75. UC Berkeley News [4]
• UC Academic Senate's memorial for Patrick Wilson. [5]