Of thesauri to topic maps: new standard for the representation and the organization of the information

Abstract

The noun growth of the number of thesauri has not served to respond to the necessity to work in multidiciplinar surroundings. In order to respond to this situation, it was fomented, at a first moment, the fusion of thesauri with object to adapt the preexisting ones to the necessities raised by the new dominions. Later, in the eagerness to take care of a world of changing information indeed and in growth, one began to work in the conceptual navigation maps. Until ending at the Topic maps arisen from the necessity to fuse indexes to incorporate therefore the utility of the hyperconnections.Its success was shaped in the norm ISO/ICE 13250:1999, that motivated the hypothesis of its use in the thesaurus elaboration, process in which the contradictions between both systems were pronounced. Reason why the essential conceptual elements in the architecture of Topic Maps are analyzed to find their costory in thesauri. This comparative study allows to indicate like limits of Topics maps, their conceptual indefinición, its innumerable relations and their ambiguity, which does not hide its advantages like a greater semantic wealth, the attainment of a new conceptual frame for fused dominions, the associations determined by verbs, and the capacity to organize informative resources of different type.