The use of AGROVOC at the Central Scientific Agricultural Library (CSAL)

A use case by the Central Scientific Agricultural Library

The Central Scientific Agricultural Library (CSAL), Moscow, Russian Federation, is the authorized scientific institution responsible for the development and updating of national linguistic support for all agricultural research in Russia. In 2007-2010, CSAL scientists translated about 33 000 AGROVOC concepts into Russian. It was the base of the first Russian AGROVOC version published in 2010.

Unfortunately, only 26 000 concepts were published that time. Since 2018, cooperation between FAO and CSAL has continued actively. CSAL revised old concepts and corrected some mismatches, translated and proposed new concepts for AGROVOC. Today, the Russian AGROVOC version contains about 36 000 preferred terms and about 8 000 alternative terms.

Another thesaurus, namely Information Retrieval Thesaurus on Agriculture and Food (in Russian), is used for national literature flow indexing. AGROVOC concepts and hierarchy is consulted when it is updated. 

As the national AGRIS-Center, CSAL uses AGROVOC routinely for indexing AGRIS records. Due to the latest AGROVOC development, it is possible to index more accurately. 

We consider AGROVOC both as the very useful reference tool for translations of any agricultural texts from Russian to English, and as the biggest information and semantic portal in the field of agriculture. Therefore, we use all possible ways to disseminate information about AGROVOC and the benefits of using it.

AGROVOC helps us to index AGRIS records precisely and to indicate researcher affiliation to our country.

Information retrieval in the AGRIS database using AGROVOC concepts helps us to monitor the level of research interest in different scientific fields. In such a manner, we can also reveal the most promising and acute issues of modern agricultural sciences and obtain a wide base for bibliometric and analytic research. Participation in AGROVOC development stimulates our own activity in the fields of terminology learning and analysis, knowledge disseminating, etc.