Presentation given at the meeting of latinamerican modes of GBIF.

1. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
The AGROVOC Thesaurus
and Workbench
Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
Cusco
14 May2010

2. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Outline
• FAO & the AGROVOC Thesaurus
• Thesaurus refinement
• AGROVOC editing tool
• AGROVOC community

3. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
FAO &
the AGROVOC
Thesaurus

4. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
FAO

5. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
AGROVOC
• A multilingual thesaurus
• Some 20 languages
• To standardize and organize terminology,
primarily for document indexing
• Coverage: all subject fields in agriculture,
forestry, fisheries, food and related domains
(e.g. environment)
• By language: ca 40000 terms EN

6. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
EXAMPLE
Hierarchical and
non-hierarchical
relationship of the
term "Maize"

7. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
AGROVOC
• Initiative of FAO and CEE (now EU), 1980s
• Maintained and updated online by FAO
• By language: ca 40000 terms EN
• Localized versions maintained by other bodies:
ministries, libraries, research institutes
http://aims.fao.org/agrovoc/

8. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
AGROVOC languages

9. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Some figures of AGROVOC use
• Average hits per day: 5400
• Average downloads per year: 1000
• Origin of online access: about 90 countries
• Who: researchers, librarians, information
managers

10. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Applications of AGROVOC
• In library setting: index items with one word
(descriptors), retrieve through many (non-
descriptors, related or BT/NT terms)
• AGRIS
• Multilinguality allows for:
• coverage of local environment and issues
• searches across languages

11. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Applications of AGROVOC cnt’d
• For data and web site organization: AgriDrupal
• inclusion of AGROVOC hierarchies in
content management systems
• Network of users
• Focal points: CONDESAN, IIT Kanpur

12. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Refinement of AGROVOC
The Agricultural Ontology
Service Concept Server
(AOS CS)

13. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Refinement of semantics: the
Agricultural Ontology Service
Concept Server (AOS CS)
• Based on AGROVOC
• A pool of agricultural concepts, better defined
than in a thesaurus setting
• Semantics is refined and made explicit, for
example the non-hierarchical relations

14. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Refined semantics
E.g. generic relationship of relatedness is replaced
by more refined relations
• In thesaurus: "pollutants" (RT) "pollution"
• With refined semantics:
• “pollution” (is-caused-by) “pollutants”

15. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Refined semantics cnt'd
MAIZE
UF corn
NT flint maize
NT popcorn
NT sweet corn
MILK
NT milk fat
NT cow milk
RT dairy cattle
Fr Lait
International Fund for
Agricultural
Development
UF IFAD
MAIZE
synonym corn
superclass-of flint maize
used-to-make popcorn
hybridized-into sweet corn
MILK
ingredient milk fat
superclass-of cow milk
produced-by dairy cattle
has-translation Lait
International Fund for
Agricultural
Development
acronym IFAD

16. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Refinement of contents
• Expanding coverage by language &
environment
• Amazonan biodiversity – IIAP & FAO

17. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Status of AGROVOC CS
• Structure and content
• refinement of relations -- OK
• “cleaning” of root nodes – OK
• Amazonan version – soon
• Format
• encoding as SKOS -- July
• soon published as Linked data (RDF) -- July

18. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
The AGROVOC editing tool
The Workbench (WB)

19. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
The Workbench (WB)
• A web-based editing tool for the AGROVOC CS
• Functionalities
• collaborative editing, multilingual
• editorial workflow
• editing rights: from casual user to publisher
• term status: proposed/validated/...
• validation and consistency check
• V1 release in June
• http://202.73.13.50:55234/agrovocdevv10/

20. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Other functionalities
•Allows for inclusion of codes, e.g.
– CABI, NAL, interagency 3alpha, FAO taxonomic
•Search, also filtered, e.g. by
• string, URI, date, relationships, ...
•Import/Export in other formats
• SKOS, RDBMS-SQL
•Statistics/Preferences
•RSS feed

21. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
Home Page

22. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
AGROVOC WB status of work
•Release v1 first week of June
•Release v2 end of 2010
• will work natively with SKOS
• will include a SPARQL endpoint

23. Caterina Caracciolo, FAO
http://www.fao.org/aims/
AGROVOC user community
•Mailing list: http://dgroups.org/fao/agrovoc
• 2007, AGROVOC e-conference of users
•Some regional network in place: EU and
Philippins
•FAO & IIAP to organize the community of
users in South America