Earlier in his career, Wilson taught philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Wilson 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 knowledge is organized and the relationships between different documents and pieces of knowledge.
[1] Wilson was the winner of the 2001 American Society for Information Science and Technology Award of Merit.
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.