Mortimer Taube

Mortimer Taube was an American librarian. He is recognized as one the 100 most important leaders in American library and information science of the 20th century. He was important to the library science field because he invented Coordinate Indexing, which uses "uniterms" in the context of cataloging. It is the forerunner to computer based searches. In the early 1950s he started his own company, Documentation, Inc. with Gerald J. Sophar. Previously he worked at such institutions as the Library of Congress, the Department of Defense, and the Atomic Energy Commission. American Libraries calls him "an innovator and inventor, as well as scholar and savvy businessman." Current Biography called him the "Dewey of mid-twentieth Librarianship." Taube had a variety of other interests including tennis, philosophy, sailing, music, and collecting paintings.