AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench Verification Phase - Final Report available

The final report (incl. the list of participants) of the AGROVOC CS Workbench Verification Phase which took place from 17 November to 12 December 2008 is now available at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/aj983e/aj983e00.pdf.The report is based on the feedback received from 17 participants from 15 countries through completed questionnaires on assigned tasks during the Verification Phase.The majority of the participants came from academic and research backgrounds, and perform the role of researcher, librarian / documentalist, or information specialist. Overall, participants had quite strong knowledge of thesauri, and many of them also had previous knowledge of ontologies. Most participants are interested in developing or maintaining one or more thesauri, and/or more complex KOS structures.Overall, the feedback was very positive on the performance and functionalities of the Workbench. Some areas for improvement were noted, e.g., the simple search functionality, format of the concept tree, creating relationships between concepts/terms, help modules, and others.This year we will organize a training session which will also be available online, and a performance test phase with all AGROVOC data.