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Re: RE Taxomomists



Extending the reply of my friend Dr. Stephenson via historical footnote, Aristotle, the first of the great systematizers, used terms like taxon and syntaxis to refer to "organize," "putting things in order," or "arrange."  Syndesis, cross-referencing, was first applied by A. within his own works.  Darwin claims that A. was the master of biological classification. A. is referred to by the geographer Strabo as the first man to create a library and that he taught the kings  of Egypt (i.e., the Ptolemies) how to "organize" a library.  In fact, it was A.'s students who created the Library at Alexandria and applied A.'s principles to collections of information resources. These were among the first bibliophylakes (librarians).

Ever since, librarians have been creating structured access tools like catalogs and thesauri, which are taxonomical products.  My guess is that folks in the KM world would prefer not to use the term "librarian." Hence, we have "taxonomists," who use such principles to create a knowledge thesaurus for organizational knowledge. To me, terms like this and "ontologist" don't do justice to what they actually mean. This form of intellectual dishonesty is in the same vein as "Chief Information [read "computer"] Officer and "information management" [read "computers"].  A thesaurus is a thesaurus is a thesaurus.

Mike






At 01:21 PM 1/29/01 -0800, you wrote:
Hi,

I suspect the word you need is "ontologist" -- You might send a message to
the Index-L discussion list.  The address
is<index-l@listserv.unc.edu>.  From time to time I've seen job notices
there for specialists to construct thesauri.

Cheers,

Mary Sue Stephenson
Senior Instructor & Coordinator of Information Technology
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
604.822-6392 [voice]  604.822.6006 [fax]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Barbara Weitbrecht wrote:

> <<I've done the web search thing and with little to no luck....my area is
> pharmaceuticals, specifically cardiovascular and central nervous system.
> Centering on disease states and research states.  Looking at these results
> as with the ones I've done, I come up with biology and plant sciences
> mostly.>>
>
> Perhaps there is another name for the speciality you are seeking.  The most
> common meaning of "taxonomist" is a biologist who identifies and classifies
> living or fossil organisms.  Taxonomist specialize by taxon: a plant
> taxonomist, an invertebrate taxonomist, a fossil fish taxonomist, etc.  Are
> you seeking an expert in pharmaceutical nomenclature?  Or something else
> entirely?
>
> Barbara Weitbrecht
> NASM Archives Divsion
> Smithsonian Institution
> bew@nasm.si.edu
>
> A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

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