  This paper discusses an axiomatic approach for the integration of ontologies,
an approach that extends to first order logic a previous approach (Kent 2000)
based on information flow. This axiomatic approach is represented in the
Information Flow Framework (IFF), a metalevel framework for organizing the
information that appears in digital libraries, distributed databases and
ontologies (Kent 2001). The paper argues that the integration of ontologies is
the two-step process of alignment and unification. Ontological alignment
consists of the sharing of common terminology and semantics through a mediating
ontology. Ontological unification, concentrated in a virtual ontology of
community connections, is fusion of the alignment diagram of participant
community ontologies - the quotient of the sum of the participant portals
modulo the ontological alignment structure.
