Dfferences between thesauri and ontologies

Abstract

Thesauri and ontologies are models of knowledge representation based on the terminological control of specific domains. This article describes a research project developed at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina as part of a Masters degree in Information Science and it focusses on the current diferences between these two models of representation. The Content Analysis Method was used as the methodology, and the theory was supported by the Communicative Terminology Theory. The discovery that both models exhibit differences regarding terms, concepts and objectives allows a deeper understanding of these tools which are considered as vital to technical and scientific communications.