The Knowledge Organization about Umbanda and its bibliographic representation: an exploratory analysis from bibliographic records

Abstract

Introduction: It presents the problem of knowledge representation about Umbanda. It contextualizes the relevance of knowing its extension to propose knowledge organization systems that guarantee its representation and production visibility. It assumes that the notations for the representation of Umbanda knowledge from Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Subject Headings are not appropriate and perpetuate prejudice and distortion. Objectives: To know how Umbanda is represented in the bibliographic records of the National Library Foundation (FBN) Catalog. It is designed to: (i) identify bibliographic records indexed under the term Umbanda; (ii) map the representation of Umbanda knowledge in the FBN Catalog; and (iii) analyze this representation by DDC notations and assigned Subject Headings. Methodology: It is based on a combined online research on the FBN Catalog to identify manifestations whose indexed subjects deal with Umbanda; collects, treats and analyzes the data obtained; It interprets the results from the perspective of Concept Theory and the framework structures of the DDC and Subject Headings. Results: We map the representation by DDC and the Subject Headings, highlighting the most used ones. It criticizes in the order to emphatize the presupposed problem. Conclusions: It shows that the representation of knowledge reflects the understanding of the time in which it was represented, reflecting on the possibility of social, political and cultural influence to be manifested. It identifies that the representation found does not reflect the current understanding and needs to be redone.