Knowledge organization and representation in digital environments: Relations between ontology and knowledge organization

Abstract

Knowledge organization faces the challenge of contributing to the management of the amount of knowledge produced and available in the Web environment. Computational ontologies are new artifacts for knowledge recording and processing and also one of the foundations of the semantic web; they pose new challenges to knowledge organization in clarifying its interdisciplinary relations and specific role within knowledge management disciplines. What are its relations to ontology? A draft of these relations is presented, obtained from authors who discuss foundational issues, with the aim of identifying the actual role of knowledge organization in the Web environment. While ontology discusses the ultimate nature of being, knowledge organization emphasizes additional practical issues unfolding all possible manifestations of that which is. A primary question is: how to seek information, how to be informed?