This paper aims to reflect on the possible approaches between terminology and folksonomy in information representation and retrieval, also seeking to identify their differences. Through a bibliographic, exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative approach, a review of both national and international literature covering scientific articles, dissertations, theses and book chapters related to the topic is conducted. In this regard, some studies identified in the literature which compare folksonomy tags with terms from controlled vocabularies in the indexing of information resources suggest that they are not mutually excluding, but complementary. It is concluded that the social tagging systems of folksonomy and controlled vocabularies as terminological products share the common purpose of assisting users in storing and sharing, organizing and retrieving resources of their interest to provide a better informational experience.