Terminological ontologies in subject organization of knowledge domains

Domains are fields of knowledge with a cognitive base, objectives, and users. They are found, as individual or social cognitive spaces. They are “there”, but to be identified and communicated they need to be made explicit. According with the librarian perspective, knowledge domains have been organized by subject through topics lists, thesauri, and classifications; however, in recent decades information technologies have provided new tools that are transforming the activity. Based on the above mentioned, the objective of this article is to analyze the scope of terminological ontologies in the subject organization of knowledge domains. The research methodology applied was analyticalqualitative and it was based on two study techniques: discourse hermeneutics and case analysis. It was found that terminological ontologies are knowledge organization systems characterized by conceptual, categorical, attributive, and relational elements that allow them to represent knowledge domains in a semantic way. It is concluded that they are systems with great advantages in subject domain management. They are machine-understandable databases which contribute to the terminological and conceptual clarification of topics, enable consensual understanding among experts, and can act as documentary languages.