 [Nouvelle publication] A Web-based tool to manage multilingual thesauri: the example of AGROVOC
9 October 2008 - 10th biennial International Conference (ISKO 2008), August 5th-8th, 2008, Montreal (Canada)
[Nouvelle publication] Scielo articles available to the agricultural community using OAI-PMH in AGRIS AP XML Format
8 October 2008 - This article reports a new way of getting access to SciELO full text journal articles using AGRIS AP XML format to harvest SciELO metadata and to include them into the AGRIS repository.
It covers the following main steps of the work carried out:
• Selecting about 43 journals with agricultural thematic from the Web site of SciELO;
• Defining the methodology for harvesting;
• Harvesting legacy data and then doing incremental harvesting for the new data from the selected SciELO
journal articles for inclusion in the AGRIS XML repository;
• Inclusion of SciELO articles and open access to them through the AGRIS search portal at
http://www.fao.org/agris/search/search.do?query=%2Bcenter%3A%28XS%29
• Testing and proposals for improvement and future use of this feature.
We share the methodology used, problems encountered, and the expected benefit. This work proves that semantically rich metadata for agricultural science and research publications based on the ¡°AGRIS
Application Profile¡± from the SciELO repository can be handled by the OAI-PMH protocol. It shows how the selected subset of metadata created with an ISIS application can be harvested through OAI-PMH protocol, which in turn allows for further creation of additional services by giving greater access and
visibility to SciELO data in the new AGRIS AP format compared to the used DC format.
The strategy that we adopted was to adapt BIREME¡¯s OAI-PMH plug-in for direct generating of AGRIS AP XML
from the SciELO application. The existing BIREME OAI-PMH plug-in interface was upgraded to accept and
expose metadata using AGRIS AP in addition to the existing DC schema. This approach was elegant but
required more time for realization and implementation by BIREME and FAO staff.
[Nouvelle publication] Comparing human and automatic thesaurus mapping approaches in the agricultural domain
7 October 2008 - Knowledge organization systems (KOS), like thesauri and other controlled vocabularies, are used to provide subject access to information systems across the web. Due to the heterogeneity of these systems, mapping between vocabularies becomes crucial for retrieving relevant information. However, mapping thesauri is a laborious task, and thus big efforts are being made
to automate the mapping process. This paper examines two mapping approaches involving the agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC, one machine-created and one human created. We are addressing the basic question “What are the pros and cons of human and automatic mapping and how can they complement each other?” By pointing out the difficulties in specific cases or groups
of cases and grouping the sample into simple and difficult types of mappings, we show the limitations of current automatic methods and come up with some basic recommendations on what approach to use when.
Online Learning Resources for Agriculture: the way forward
6 October 2008 - 29 September, 2008
A workshop to review progress over the past four years of the CGIAR’s Online Learning Resources Project and plan for the future has made considerable progress towards defining the goals of a third phase for the project.
The OLR project is intended to provide an educational technology platform that gives access to information that can strengthen research skills, to facilitate cooperation between educators and researchers and to improve access to learning materials generated by the international, publicly funded research of the CGIAR. It helps to ensure quality training and education in the CGIAR and for partners.
The workshop brought together several stakeholders, among them universities in developed and developing countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the ARIADNE Foundation for the European Knowledge Pool.
Read the full story on: http://www.bioversityinternational.org/news_and_events/news/article/article/online-learning-resources-for-agriculture-the-way-forward/?tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=323&cHash=45815b1e86
[New Publication] Implementation of rich metadata formats and semantic tools using DSpace
3 October 2008 - International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications (DC 2008), September 22nd-26th, 2008 Berlin (Germany)
AGROVOC Revision and Refinement documented and shared via a Blog
2 October 2008 - The AGROVOC master copy is currently being revised by ICRISAT, India. Work is being carried out to improve the consistency and accuracy of the thesaurus, and to better structure it to convert to the AGROVOC Concept Server. The revision of the thesaurus will mainly concern its hierarchical structure, non-descriptors and relationships, that will be better defined and refined.
After completion of this phase, the thesaurus will be converted into the Concept Server. Maintenance will be done by all partners through the online AGROVOC Concept Server workbench.
The ICRISAT AGROVOC team has published a blog to document the process: http://agrovoc-revision-refinement.blogspot.com.
AGROVOC users, in particular partners updating the language versions of AGROVOC, are encouraged to contribute to the 'Agrovoc Revision and Refinement' blog.
New version of the Workbench 0.2 Beta
23 September 2008 - After releasing version 0.1 in December 2007, the new version of the Workbench 0.2 Beta is now available through: http://vivaldi.cpe.ku.ac.th:443/agrovoc02beta/.
Keeping the initial commitment to support the building of multilingual ontology and terminology systems in the area of agriculture, the following have been included: newly published Concept Server modules for Food, Health, Pest Control, Policies, Rice, and Science, with all multilingual terms; video help manual; RSS feed to get notifications on content changes, and the full FAO classifications (Agris/Caris and the FAO Technical Knowledge Classification scheme).
The Workbench is still in testing phase and, although it already contains part of the real Agrovoc data, it can be used only for test modifications which would not reflect in the Agrovoc thesaurus.
Users are encouraged to register or log in as guest, to use the application, and provide valuable feedback. Next development steps will be towards addressing performances matters.
[Nouvelle publication] Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008) E-Conference
17 September 2008 - This report provides the summary of the discussions that took place during the Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008, http://aglr.aua.gr/econf.php) E-Conference. AgLR 2008 aimed to explore the needs and requirements of stakeholders involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories. It was organised as an electronically facilitated discussion, during April 24 – June 15, 2008. AgLR 2008 was supported and promoted by the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF, http://aglr.aua.gr).
[Nouvelle publication] Results from a study of the implementation of metadata application profiles in Agricultural Learning Repositories
17 September 2008 - In technology-enhanced learning, metadata interoperability has been identified as an important issue. It allows not only the exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information (such as competency profiles, learning activities, and descriptions of learning resources), but also its future re-use among a large number of different systems and repositories. In the field of
agricultural education and training, learning technologies¡¯ specifications and standards have not yet been widely adopted. Few initiatives have reported implementing them, and in most cases only to describe learning resources by using IEEE Learning Object
Metadata (LOM), Dublin Core (DC) or a combination of the two. This results in introduction of dispersed efforts and systems with significant differences between them. In this paper, we present results of a study aiming at the review and assessment of
implementations of metadata standards in agricultural learning repositories. More specifically, it assesses the current status of development and implementation of metadata application profiles based on standards such as IEEE LOM and DC.
Nouveau projet pour améliorer et moderniser les Profils FAO de pays et système d'information cartographique
22 August 2008 - En mai 2008, la FAO a approuvé un nouveau projet visant à améliorer et à moderniser les Profils FAO de pays et système d'information cartographique (FCPMIS), disponibles sur Internet depuis 2002. Les principaux objectifs du projet sont d'améliorer l'accès des utilisateurs à l'information par pays et par domaines d'expertise de la FAO et de favoriser la collaboration entre les divisions techniques, les bureaux décentralisés de la FAO et d'autres organisations partenaires.
La FAO participe activement à l'élaboration et la diffusion de normes et procédures internationales pour la gestion de l'information dans le domaine de l'agriculture. La nouvelle version de FCPMIS jouera un rôle important en facilitant l'adoption de normes internationales pour les données nationales et régionales, par la FAO et ses partenaires extérieurs, afin de permettre échange et partenariat.
La première phase du projet, qui est déjà en cours, vise à créer un cadre approprié pour identifier les informations qui doivent être mises à jour ou corrigées, et encourage la participation des usagers et des différentes parties prenantes.
Le projet devrait s'achever en décembre 2009. Pour de plus amples informations, veuillez contacter: fao-country-profiles@fao.org
[Nouvelle publication] Towards a harmonization of metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories
6 August 2008 - Metadata interoperability allows the exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching
information, as well as its future reuse among a large number of different systems and repositories. This paper introduces work around metadata interoperability that has taken place in the context of the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF), an international community of the stakeholders that are involved in agricultural learning
repositories. It particularly focuses on a review and assessment of metadata application profiles that are currently implemented in agricultural learning repositories. The results of this study can
be found useful by who are designing, implementing and operating agricultural learning repositories, facilitating thus metadata interoperability in this application field.
[Nouvelle publication] Sharing agricultural events information: When and where is that workshop?
6 August 2008 - In the last few years a strong need has emerged for a standard way to interchange various types of information, such as on organizations, projects, experts, events and news, in the agricultural
community. This paper focuses on the metadata set for events, the Agricultural Events Application Profile (Ag-Events AP), created specifically to enhance description, exchange and reuse of information on events. The Ag-Events AP provides a minimum interoperability layer through which information about upcoming events related to agriculture can be described, shared and reused. The Ag-Events AP was developed by FAO, in collaboration with its partners,
the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and Global Forest Information Service (GFIS), to offer a ¡°minimum¡± set of metadata elements necessary to share quality descriptions about events. This paper talks about the work done on creating the AP, its use in various applications and the next steps.
[Nouvelle publication] The AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench: A collaborative tool for managing multilingual knowledge
25 July 2008 - Ontology plays an important role in the enhancement performance of systems, addressing issues such as knowledge sharing, knowledge aggregation as well as information retrieval and question answering. This paper presents the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench (ACSW) for multilingual ontological concept construction and maintenance. The ACSW is a web 2.0 based application consisting of two main functionalities that are user management and ontological knowledge management (i.e. concept, scheme, relationship, export, search, validate and consistency check) in order to maintain the knowledge acquisition life-cycle in food and agriculture domain. Knowledge is stored in the form of multilingual concept hierarchy and also kept in the OWL format in order to exchange between machines and to do reasoning. This workbench uses Prot¨¦g¨¦ API as an OWL framework. Moreover the Ontology Game conceptual framework is also presented in order to acquire ontology terms more pleasant.
First Call For Papers - SWAP 2008
16 July 2008 - 5th Workshop on Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives
FAO-UN, Rome, Italy (15-17 December 2008)
The Semantic Web is currently one of the most interesting and ambitious challenges that the scientific and technological community is facing. While great progresses have been made in terms of consolidation of base philosophy and infrastructure, new issues, technologies and tools are emerging.
These issues include creating, presenting and managing Semantic Web content, making semantics explicit in order to automatically integrate data from different sources, and to search for information based on its meaning rather than its syntactic form.
New and advanced methods, models, tools, and technologies for services related to creation, access, retrieval, integration, and filtering of Web content are being developed at the intersection of relevant disciplines that are making the Semantic Web fly, such as Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Distributed Computing, Multimedia Systems, Natural Language Processing, and Human-Computer Interaction.
For more information visit the related Web site.
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Workshop on Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgroLT 2008), September 19, 2008
19 September 2008 - 19 September 2008
In the field of agricultural education, specifications and standards produced in the area of agricultural learning technologies have not yet been widely adopted and implemented. Sharing, preserving and reusing learning information among a large number of different systems and repositories would not only lead to wider dissemination of learning technology standards for educational applications but also help reaching a potential consensus of related work by comparing and harmonizing similar/competing approaches. The aim of the Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgroLT) 2008 Workshop is to bring together researchers and implementers that are working on the design and development of technology-enhanced learning systems and services to support the needs of the agricultural and rural communities. Its objective is to serve as a discussion forum where interested experts will present the results of their work and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects outlining the potential of the agricultural domain as an application field for learning technologies. For more information please visit related Web site.
FAO/ICT-KM Knowledge Workshop on Knowledge Sharing
8 September 2008 - 4 August 2008
With the successful completion of the Knowledge Workshop earlier this year, we are happy to announce a new opportunity to learn and exchange knowledge sharing techniques. As in the previous workshop organized by the Institutional Knowledge Sharing project of the ICT-KM, this workshop will be divided into three phases, including both online and face-to-face components. For more information and to register for a limited number of seats, please review the attached flyer. The course is divided into three phases: Phase 1 will take place online (4 weeks), Phase 2 will take place in Rome, Italy (3 days) and Phase 3 will be online (6 months). You can choose to participate in phases 1, 1+2, or 1+2+3 of the course. You must participate in phase 1 to participate in phase 2, and both 1 and 2 to participate in phase 3.
Special Session of the Agricultural Ontology Service Initiative
26 August 2008 - 26 August 2008
A "Special Session of the Agricultural Ontology Service Initiative: semantic problems and semantic solutions in agricultural knowledge and information products" will take place as part of the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA Conference. The aim of this session is to showcase practical applications of semantic tools. The contributions will be of specific relation and relevance to agriculture and related subject areas and are not expected to be generic papers about semantic tools.
Agricultural Learning Repositories E-Conference (May 2008)
24 April 2008 - 5 June 2008
Making learning resources available online on a global scale, could be an enabler for the development and welfare of agricultural and rural populations. One mean to achieve this aim, is the development and promotion of a global infrastructure that will facilitate sharing and reusing of learning resources on topics related to agricultural and rural development. To this end, the experience of stakeholders that are involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories would be of extreme value. These stakeholders can promote and share guidance, standards, technologies, tools, recommendations, and good practices in a variety of topics: Designing, Developing, Adapting, and Repurposing Learning Resources; Setting up Learning Repositories using Open Standards and Technologies; Populating Learning Repositories with Reusable Learning Resources and Interoperable Metadata; Designing and Implementing a variety of Quality Assurance Procedures and Criteria for Learning Resources; Inter-connecting Learning Repositories in Global Federations to share and exchange Resources and Metadata; and Deploying Regional Portals that provide Access to Learning Resources in Repositories around the world through Federated Services.
The aim of the e-Conference on Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008) is to initiate the dialogue around these topics, involving organizations and individuals that are active in the field of agricultural learning repositories.
The AgLR 2008 e-Conference is going to be an electronically facilitated discussion that will take place through a DGroups mailing list. It is the first of a series of events that are supported and promoted by the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force.
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