Richard P. Smiraglia

Richard P. Smiraglia
Born	1952 New York City, New York
Residence	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Nationality	American
Fields	Information science
Institutions	University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Alma mater	Lewis & Clark College, Indiana University, University of Chicago, General Theological Seminary

Richard P. Smiraglia is an American information scientist and prominent figure in the field of knowledge organization. Smiraglia is currently a full professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Knowledge Organization and a cataloging theorist perhaps best known for his work concerning two concepts pertaining to bibliographic control, information retrieval, and knowledge organization: a definition of the meaning of a “work” derived from empirical and semiotic analysis, and “instantiation,” the phenomenon of an information object realized in time.

Smiraglia, a one-time flautist who holds a B.A. in music from Lewis & Clark College (1973), is also known for his work concerning music description and music information storage and retrieval He earned a Masters of Divinity from The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church (1997) as well and is an Episcopalian priest. Currently Professor and member of the Information Organization Research Group at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Smiraglia has taught at Long Island University (1993-2009), Columbia University (1987-1993), and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1974-1986).

In The Nature of “A Work”: Implications for the Organization of Knowledge, published in 2001, Smiraglia provides a history of the treatment and role of works (as in literary works, musical works, etc. – intellectual or artistic creations) in catalogs and a survey of empirical research into the work phenomenon. Traditional modern library catalogs, Smiraglia observes, were designed to “inventory (first) and retrieve (second) specific documents,” and were built “on an assumption that there was a correspondence between a book and the work it contained – one item, one work, and vice versa." Works don’t equal documents (in book form or otherwise), however; Smiraglia delineates between these two concepts and that of “text”:

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