 Svenonius received an MA in Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, an MA in Library Science in 1965 from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in Library Science in 1971, as well from the University of Chicago.In "The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization", Svenonius attempts to "synthesize the literature of
information organization in a language and at a level of generality to make it understandable to persons outside the field of library and information science" and to "synthesize subject and descriptive cataloging within a common conceptual framework.