Assuming as a starting point the acknowledge that the principles and methods used to build and manage the documentary systems are disperse and lack systematization, this study hypothesizes that the notion of structure, when assuming mutual relationships among its elements, promotes more organical systems and assures better quality and consistency in the retrieval of information concerning users’ matters. Accordingly, it aims to explore the fundamentals about the records of information and documentary systems, starting from the notion of structure. In order to achieve that, it presents basic concepts and relative matters to documentary systems and information records. Next to this, it lists the theoretical subsides over the notion of structure, studied by Benveniste, Ferrater Mora, Lévi-Strauss, Lopes, Peñalver Simó, Saussure, apart from Ducrot, Favero and Koch. Appropriations that have already been done by Paul Otlet, García Gutiérrez and Moreiro González. In Documentation come as a further topic. It concludes that the adopted notion of structure to make explicit a hypothesis of real systematization achieves more organical systems, as well as it grants pedagogical reference to the documentary tasks.
Data bases; Structure; Information records; Documentary systems