Knowledge Organization Systems. Taxonomy. Thesaurus. Ontology.
The historical and scientific path of Information Science is guided by the practices of treatment and organization of information and knowledge, as well as the representation, management, retrieval and access. Allied to this path are the advances in digital technologies. The integration of these practices and the improvement of these technologies have motivated the improvement of concepts; processes; instruments; methods; and so many other operations related to essayists, researchers and professionals of this science. The aim of this thesis was to map the concepts and processes of the Knowledge Organization Systems (thesaurus, taxonomy and ontology) improved by the enhancement of digital technologies, for the organization and representation of information and knowledge in the Information Science in Brazil. It also promotes a qualitative investigation of the methods of planning, construction and use of these systems. Therefore, the thesis is structured in four sections: Introduction, in which the contextualization of the research was sought, delimiting the problem and the justification for the investigation; the presentation of the objectives to which the research was proposed; the methodological path adopted which, in this case, was based on the Problematization Methodology and on the Arch of Maguerez. The second and third sections reflected on the area of Organization and Representation of Information and Knowledge, respectively, exploring, thus, a bibliographical overview on the target systems studied in this thesis and others, such as: Classification, Folksonomy and Conceptual Maps. Then, in the section of analysis and discussion of results, the reflections in which the objectives of this thesis were proposed were presented, mapping, therefore, an evolutionary itinerary of the development of systems of knowledge organization, as well as verticalizing the studies of concepts and processes of the target systems of investigation of this research. Through the elements previously mentioned, it was considered that thesaurus, taxonomies and ontologies, for Information Science, in their conceptual-processual scope, were potentially improved due to the properties and the improvement of digital technologies adopted in the planning, execution, maintenance and evaluation of the application and use of these systems, in the multiple environments in which they were presented.