Domain Analysis

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Domain analysis is a framework in information science, developed by Birger Hjorland and Hanne Albrechtsen (1995), that treats a domain as “a body of knowledge, defined socially and theoretically as the knowledge of a group sharing ontological and epistemological commitments.” Domains are not natural kinds waiting to be discovered. They are discourse communities held together by shared assumptions about what exists, what counts as evidence, and how knowledge is produced.

Upper Ontologies and Knowledge Organization

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every major upper ontology divides reality by mode of being — how things exist — rather than by topic, discipline, or domain. No upper ontology lists “physics,” “biology,” and “sociology” as top-level categories. This is a finding, not an accident, and it has consequences for how knowledge libraries should be organized.

Four upper ontologies

BFO (Basic Formal Ontology) divides everything into two categories: continuants (entities that persist through time and maintain their identity — objects, qualities, roles) and occurrents (entities that unfold in time — processes, events, temporal regions). BFO became ISO/IEC 21838-2 in 2020. It is deliberately minimal: 36 classes, no domain content, designed as a top-level framework that domain ontologies extend. Its philosophical lineage runs through Aristotelian substance ontology.

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Domain Analysis

Upper Ontologies and Knowledge Organization

Four upper ontologies