Resource Description and Knowledge Organization

In this section you will find information and tools for organizing knowledge and resources.

"The Agricultural Metadata Standards Initiative" is a proposal about an agricultural metadata framework currently discussed within FAO and with other stakeholders. Metadata are data about data, e.g., the author of a particular work. They are the necessary descriptions that make information retrievable on the Web. WAICENT is committed to catalyzing a discussion process about standards for the description of agricultural information.

"AGROVOC Multilingual Thesaurus" describes the multilingual agricultural thesaurus, AGROVOC, and the uses that can be made of it.

"The Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Project" describes a project to develop a federation of ontologies – knowledge representation systems containing terminology, descriptions and relationships of the agricultural domain. This project takes the next step in the development of AGROVOC. Also available is a concept note written in July 2001.

AGROVOC

AGROVOC is FAO's multilingual agricultural thesaurus. A thesaurus is a system of terms and relations that presents knowledge in a specific domain. AGROVOC can be seen on-line at: http://www.fao.org/aims/ag_intro.htm.

AGROVOC contains at present 16 607 descriptors and numerous non-descriptors (synonyms). [There are 10,758 in English alone]. The on-line version, accessible from FAO's Website (above), is available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, a version in Arabic will be published in the Spring of next year. Numerous other language versions are used all over the world.

What follows is some information on how to use AGROVOC:

Descriptors are indexing terms consisting of one or more words which represent always one and the same concept. They appear in capital letters and are followed by their word blocks, i.e. the hierarchical structure of the term.

Non-descriptors are terms which help the user to find the appropriate descriptor(s). They appear in small letters and are followed by a reference (USE operator) to the descriptor, which is the preferred term, and the only one which may be used for indexing.

Table of symbols used in the word blocks of descriptors and non-descriptors

Searching for a descriptor

To search for a descriptor, type a term or part of a term (at least two characters), followed by an asterisk * . Click on "submit".

Example: agricultur* will retrieve "AGRICULTURE", "AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT", "ORGANIC AGRICULTURE", etc.

To see the whole word block just click on the descriptor.

In addition to the on-line version of AGROVOC (www.fao.org/agrovoc), printed editions and CDs are available.