Article,
The Double Role of Ontologies in Information Science
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, (2007)
Abstract
In philosophy, Ontology is the basic description of things in the
world. In information science, an ontology refers to an engineering
artifact, constituted by a specific vocabulary used to describe a
certain reality. Ontologies have been proposed for validating both
conceptual models and conceptual schemas. However, these roles are
quite dissimilar. In this paper, we will show that ontologies can
be better understood if we classify the different uses of the term
as it appears in the literature. First we explain Ontology (with
a capital O) as used in Philosophy. Then, we propose a differentiation
between ontologies of information systems from ontologies for information
systems. All three concepts have an important role in information
science. We clarify the different meanings and uses of Ontology and
ontologies through a comparison of the research by Wand & Weber and
by Guarino in ontology-driven information systems. The contributions
of this paper are twofold. First, it provides a better understanding
of what ontologies are. Second, it explains the double role of ontologies
in information science research.
