Second-Hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority

by Patrick Wilson

211 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 1983

About the author

Patrick Wilson (December 29, 1927 – September 12, 2003) was a noted librarian, information scientist and philosopher who served as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and as dean of the School of Library and Information Studies (now the School of Information) there. Earlier in his career, Wilson taught philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Aravind Raamkumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this book as a part of my coursework. Wilson introduces his concept of Cognitive Authority which loosely means the person/organisation holding our mind-space for a particular domain or speciality. He discusses about this concept in academia, daily life and culminates it with the library. Being a librarian, he allocates the final chapter for librarians and discusses about their role as proxy cognitive authorities. I am told that Wilson is one of the few guys who takes a philosophical approach to Information Science and I have to agree to that point after reading this book. Wilson is particularly good at showing how we make decisions using the information at hand. I would recommend this book to newbies in information science.

[Mark]

Haven't touched this in a good while. Will need to start over, or at least read my notes. Putting on pase as of 29 May 2015.