Abstract: A system and method for generating local deployments of ontological mappings includes comparing a customizable version of an ontological mapping with a reference version and determining differences in the mappings. The differences may be used to generate a local instantiation to record the user's preferences, the local instantiation being retained on the user's computer system or accessible only by the user or a system administrator, i.e., not accessible by an unrelated user. The local instantiation then exhibits permanence, remaining accessible by the user to manually or automatically update the most recent ontological mapping to incorporate the user's mappings.