AIMS

FAO & UNESCO -IOC/IODE AgriOcean Dspace

AgriOcean Dspace

The United Nations agencies of FAO and UNESCO-IOC/IODE created a joint initiative to customize version of DSpace (known as AgriOceanDspace-AOD) using standards and controlled vocabularies in oceanography, marine science, food, agriculture, development, fisheries, forestry, natural resources and related sciences. On the 23rd of January FAO and UNESCO-IOC/IODE met in Oostende, Belgium to a meeting which discussed AOD and future developments. Within the framework of ensuring better development of the tool in handling good metadata, the following technical developments will be made available with new features of DSpace. The upgrade will come with a new batch metadata processing functions, easier upgrade and configuration process, better capacities to handle bugs and authority control. The AOD release will be based on the latest version of Dspace with attention to the following:

  •        Batch import
  •        Authority Control – i.e Thesaurus plug-in
  •        Copyright licence selection tool
  •        Duplication control tool
  •        Fine tuning the harvesting possibilities.

In the same spirit both partners are to continue to have at least an article each month on AgricOceanDspace issues on the AIMS platform. Members of the oceans community were encouraged to register AOD forum on AIMS to further benefit from the communication and also to provide feedback.

ASKOSI

A project called, Application Services for Knowledge Organisation and System Integration project (ASKOSI) was also presented at this meeting. ASKOSI was launched a few years ago by the Belgium Poison Centre and its partners to maximise the benefit of building thesauri and other reference list by reusing existing information systems and by providing better management and presentation of tools, well integrated in the application the user needs daily. The Belgium Poison Centre answers more than 60 000 emergency calls from the general public exposed to toxic substances or practitioners responsible to cure them. They had to build a system that “brings together the right specialist, the right scientific knowledge and the right data at the right time”. The poison centre therefore keeps up to date operational knowledge about intoxication and diagnosis management using a Dspace repository. An API providing services around a data model, in this case SKOS as core with SQL and XML to exchange data was built. This API enables diverse applications:

  1. To provide cataloguers or information providers with up to date controlled vocabularies.
  2. To ensure precise indexing and systems cross linking concept codes rather than words
  3. To allow users to search using synonyms, translations or concept hierarchies;
  4. To display frequencies of concepts’ usage so every users may know how much information is behind each concept.

In this context, WORDS from incoming calls are translated into CONCEPTS and these have to be linked to DATA to provide a feedback to the query. An internal thesaurus is kept and linked to the other remote resources such as MeSH control tool; NCBI taxonomy and AGROVOC to help in retrieving relevant data. However, the project uses a 2007 edition of AGROVOC and after learning of the developments on AGROVOC and how it has evolved in the linked open data movement there was a keen interest to collaborate with FAO in this regard.For more details see http://www.askosi.org/DESTIN-ISKO-UCL.pdf

CGSpace

The CGIAR has launched a customised repository on Dspace branded CGSpace available online http://www.ilri.cgiar.org/, as a repository of research produced by various CGIAR centres. International livestock Research Institute (ILRI), one of the CGIAR centres in Kenya, had a Dspace repository and it was discovered that it had also documents from outside ILRI and it is then that possibilities of creating other communities for other centres was conceived. In 2011 it was decided to open up ILRI Repository to cover other CGIAR initiatives and then CGSpace was born as a cloud repository service for these centres via the single interface. FAO and UNESCO IOC also have a Dspace customisation AgricOcean Dspace although in the latter institutions download and host the database on their own, CGSpace is only open to CGIAR centres and to these a hosting option is provided. It is important to note that/ the metadata of the two systems CGIAR and AOD are being evaluated.