Vocabularies are organized knowledge structures. There are different types of vocabularies like authority files, classification systems, concept maps, controlled lists, ontologies, taxonomies, glossaries, subject headings etc. Their purpose is to facilitate the retrieval of content in data sets. In addition the VEST Registry Vocabularies contains currently 113 vocabularies. You can browse the vocabularies by type and subject domain.

Within the AIMS umbrella a number of different initiatives related to vocabularies are ongoing.

Vocabularies

AGROVOC is the corporate, multilingual thesaurus of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. It includes topics related to agriculture, forestry, fisheries, environment and other domains. It is a multilingual resource, available in more than 20 languages, with an average of 40.000 terms.

Automatic indexing services

AgroTagger is a service used for indexing information resources automatically. It extracts keywords, using AGROVOC, from Microsoft Office documents, PDF files and web pages.

Tools for managing vocabularies

The VocBench is a web-based, multilingual, vocabulary editing and workflow tool developed by FAO. It is currently used to maintain AGROVOC, the Biotechnology Glossary and bibliographic metadata used in FAO