From the Great Chain of Being to Encyclopaedia Britannica to the Internet: Designing the Architecture of Knowledge June 1, 2006

Panel: Erin McKean, Oxford American Dictionary, TheodorePappas, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Edward Valauskas, Chicago Botanic Garden and Dominican University
Chair: Sara Austin, The Newberry Library

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Internet has made the hoary subject of taxonomy "hotter" than it has been since 1911, when the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica staked a claim to the organization of all knowledge. A panel of scholars and editors engaged in the historical study of the organization of knowledge will discuss what today's cyber-geeks can learn from the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century creators of encyclopedias, taxonomies, and dictionaries.

Official Website: http://www.newberry.org/programs/ExhibitPrograms.html