Lexical conventions create consistent formats for enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of terminology-related activities. They improve the efficiency of data entry, the interpretability of lexical data by humans (serving as a form of documentation by, e.g., allowing quick identification of names), and the machine readability (e.g., enabling programmatic manipulations of...
This paper introduces the criteria and the procedures for mapping the Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus (CAT) to FAO’s multilingual agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC. It proposes modifications to the interthesaurus mapping rules provided in the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) specification. It outlines in detail the criteria for the application of each of...
The first COAIM (Consultation on Agricultural information Management), held in June 2000 recognized that AGRIS should become “a key enabler and catalyst to establish a new model of agricultural information management”. Furthermore, it was agreed that FAO [1] should develop AGRIS into a capacity building initiative as well as an...
As with many domains, information retrieval and knowledge management (IR/KM) in ethics suffers from the problems of semantic heterogeneity, making it difficult for providers to disseminate their services effectively and for users to retrieve the information they need. An analysis was conducted of resources provided by two hundred or so...
The scarcity of literature in educational institutions is a serious problem in different parts of the world, particularly in developing countries where there is a real need for better access to information. It is vitally important that the technological gap between developing and developed countries is narrowed, and scientific journals...
This document provides detailed technical information for converting bibliographic data from local databases into valid AGRIS DTD compliant XML records. The process that is to be carried out is, to some extent, complex. However, the result will benefit the Institutions and Centres that produce bibliographic data of agricultural content, in...
Recent legislative activity in the US House of Representatives and the UK House of Commons has added fuel to a debate over electronic access to the Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) literature that was initiated in 1999 with the introduction of E-Biomed. On-going efforts to change the landscape of STM...
Existing classification schemes and thesauri are lacking in well-defined semantics and structural consistency. Empowering end users in searching collections of ever increasing magnitudes with performance far exceeding plain free-text searching (as used in many Web search engines), and developing systems that not only find but also process information for action...
Many agree that knowledge is central to development, and that there are considerable resources of knowledge and information that could be made available to assist poor people deal more effectively with the root causes of their poverty. The new information and communications technologies (ICT), and increased priority and resources for...
This short case study will show on the basis of a simple example taken from the Food Safety area, how ontologies differ from thesauri. The example will start with showing an extract from the AGROVOC1 thesaurus and exploring the information that can be extracted from here. We will then develop...
