The Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AgMES) - Concept Note

The exponential growth of available material on the World Wide Web has created the challenge of how to get meaningful information and knowledge out of it. This is because resource discovery varies depending on the structure, type and content of the resource, and with the interests of the information keepers. Furthermore, the information needs of users are often complex. This requires that information and knowledge be drawn from distributed archives and systems in different domains. The notion of the semantic web defines this goal and various initiatives are underway to improve resource discovery and knowledge mining.

The Agricultural Metadata Standards Initiative (AgMES ) was launched in November 2000 at a workshop in Brussels, jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and OneWorld Europe. The project aims to encompass issues of semantic standards in the domain of agriculture with respect to description, resource discovery, interoperability and data exchange for different types of information resources. AgMES will act as an umbrella under which namespaces can be defined for newly declared elements that are deemed necessary and are used for different resources (Document like Information Objects or DLIOs, projects, fishing gear presentations, images, technologies, practices, maps etc.) in all areas relevant to food production, nutrition and rural development.

The AgMES Project lies within the framework of a wider and more comprehensive AgStandards Initiative which is an attempt to promote, among other things, the use of metadata through use of standardized agricultural metadata terms for the purpose of facilitating resource discovery and interoperability between and among uniquely and richly described agricultural resources making it easier to integrate data from different sources to engage in effective data exchange. It defines elements, qualifiers, encoding schemes and controlled lists that are generic yet seen necessary for the description of agricultural resources. The project recommendations take into account the proposed elements of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI ) as a starting point.

The overall objective of the AgMES project is to define an interoperability layer using emerging standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of agricultural content. Specific tasks are to:

• define a low barrier layer to aid primary resource discovery through promotion of "open" exchange of information initiatives i.e. the Open Archives Initiative (OAI);
• define a richer layer to aid secondary resource discovery; especially non-digitized resources, and promote homogeneity of meta element description for agricultural resources;
• transfer the metadata specification in an appropriate machine-readable technical framework (viz. a common XML Document Type Description, XML schema extended, and RDF schema);
• use the format as a common denominator to homogenize sets of results of the Multi-Host Server (search interface that enables parallel searching on distributed heterogeneous databases);
• use the format for management of agricultural resources by data owners.

The strategy and methodology adopted were:

• Development of a conceptual framework of different types of agricultural information resources in order to homogenize the meta elements description.
• Evaluation of currently available standards and common resource description practices; preparation of draft specification for a Dublin Core based standard.
• Identification of 14 core elements for resource description at generic level and qualification of elements (using the DC guidelines), to enable description of resources at different levels of granularity. (A full element description was made, using a set of ten attributes from the ISO/IEC 11179 standard for the description of data elements.)
• Discussion of the proposal within the agricultural community, especially on the AgStandards Discussion forum.

The preliminary results presented:

• A lower barrier layer: Unqualified core metadata set of 14 elements from AgMES and DC, (Creator, Title, Rights, Relation, Subject, Description, Coverage, Date, Identifier, Language, Type, Format, and Citation)
• A richer interoperability layer: Qualified Dublin Core based Metadata set

The anticipated benefits of the Agricultural Metadata Element Set are:

• Low barrier interoperability layer that enables harvesting of metadata through open exchange of information initiatives;
• Format to describe and maintain agricultural resources both at FAO and within the Agricultural Community (Agricultural Subject Gateways, CGNET, National Agricultural Research Centres);
• Format for uniform presentation of meta information on the WAICENT Internet portal
• Format for exchange and description of information resources within the AGRIS (Agricultural Information System);
• Format for the AGRIS Multi-Host Server and Open Archives Initiative.

Future developments and documentation will include:

• Monitoring the impact of the proposed metadata for agricultural resources, making any changes or enhancements based on the results of the impact study;
• Undertaking outreach-type work to promote and facilitate the rational and widespread use of Metadata;
• Development of good documentation and user guidelines;
• Effecting further developments to incorporate more specific aspects of given disciplines through the customization of individual data models as necessary;
• Registering of the new metadata elements in well-accepted registries;
• Initiating pilot projects between FAO and Agricultural Subject Gateways to share metadata about agricultural resources in a commonly accepted format.
• Creating a metadata clearinghouse for exchange of knowledge and advances on semantic standards in the domain of Agriculture.

The AGMES project is challenging and its success will be achieved only through a continual maintenance process. Other projects will create new terms for other areas of knowledge and for other types of information resources within the domain. They will be represented and documented as they become available.