The use of AGROVOC in Indonesia

A use case by Madiareni Sulaiman, Indonesian Institute of Sciences

As of today, there are only two scientific thesauruses in Indonesia: Women in Development Thesaurus (1991) and the Indonesian Science and Technology Thesaurus (Thesaurus IPTEK, 2015). In order to catalog library materials and databases, other thesauri are also provided for multi-disciplinary coverage. Using controlled vocabulary helps to improve the quality of information retrieval (keywords and topics) in an advanced search. Especially when using the Indonesian science and technology thesaurus ---this is the result of the list of keyword/controlled vocabulary in Indonesian language since 2014. The combination of keywords and themes is based on two subject headings: the Library Congress of Subject Headings and Medical Subject Headings, and more than a dozen related thesauruses, including AGROVOC.

The Scientific Data and Documentation Center (PDDI) at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) focuses on specific agricultural topics and keyword metadata fields and uses AGROVOC to facilitate retrieval and cataloging practices in the database. Before using their online version, they used AGROVOC's multilingual printed thesaurus (FAO, 2nd ed. 1993 and 1999). Every librarian has it on their desk along with other thesaurus as a reference; they also organize scientific outputs in other fields. 

AGROVOC Thesaurus for knowledge retrieval

The databases managed by the PDDI are the Indonesian Scientific Journal Database (15.609 journals with 420.057 articles), RIN Dataverse (9.590 datasets, and 40.122 files) and Library Catalogue using Senayan Library Management System (SLIMS). 

Through the PDDI, the Indonesian Institute of Sciences is the ISSN National Centre for Indonesia. Each year, based on Figure 1 below, there is an increase of new scientific journals in agricultural sciences. This means that the need to catalog those serial publications is also growing by the year. Moreover, as a serial publication, some will publish two or four times per year with 5-15 scientific articles per series.

At the same time, according to Figure 2, subject and catalog librarians always use AGROVOC when looking for a controlled vocabulary of keywords and topics related to agricultural sciences. 

The Future Use of AGROVOC Thesaurus in Indonesia

Currently, LIPI is building a biodiversity center in Indonesia. All digital materials (DNA, samples, and genomic data) will use related thesauri, especially AGROVOC, as keywords to find reference records and include them in the catalog. Indonesia has been using the structured and standardized index of terms, definitions, and relationships provided by AGROVOC to preserve scientific data and works. The benefits of using AGROVOC for the Indonesian use case are as follows:

• AGROVOC helps subject librarians have an improved cataloging process for searching for concepts or terms in library materials.
• AGROVOC provides a variety of multilingual and controlled vocabulary terms in the field of agricultural and biodiversity terminology.
• AGROVOC is linked to open data for agriculture, which can increase the visibility of research publications.

Unfortunately, there is no Indonesian version of AGROVOC multilingual thesaurus on the Internet, therefore, this will be an excellent opportunity for Indonesian representatives to cooperate with the AGROVOC editorial community to jointly develop the Indonesian version of AGROVOC into a multilingual thesaurus in the near future.

References

FAO 1993a. AGROVOC Multilingual Thesaurus [Cited 31 August 2021]. https://agrovoc.fao.org/browse/agrovoc/en/ 

FAO 1999b.AGROVOC Multilingual Thesaurus [Cited 31 August 2021]. https://agrovoc.fao.org/browse/agrovoc/en/ 

Nasrul, Zurniaty [et al.] 1991. Women in development thesaurus. Jakarta: Clearinghouse for Information on Women in Development. Centre for Scientific Documentation and Information, Indonesian Institute of Sciences in cooperation with Unicef, 1991 xvii, 289 p. 

Tim Tesaurus PDII LIPI 2015. Thesaurus IPTEK. Jakarta: PDII LIPI.