Workshop on AGROVOC and VocBench for editors from the South and Southeast Asian region
A three-day workshop on "AGROVOC management and applications, and use of VocBench" for AGROVOC managers and editors from the South and Southeast Asian region, was held from 12-14 October 2011 at ICRISAT in Patancheru, India. The workshop, jointly organized by FAO and ICRISAT, had the objective of introducing and promoting the VocBench, and to give a hands-on training on managing AGROVOC data in different languages.
Participants from five countries
Sixteen participants from Bangladesh, India, Lao, Malaysia and Thailand attended the workshop. They gave short presentations about their work, and informed about the status of AGROVOC in their specific language.
Presentations
The workshop included presentations on the following topics:
- "Introduction to the AGROVOC Concept Scheme model: Thesauri and concept schemes in different formats";
- "AGROVOC as Linked Open Data (LOD), and alignment with other thesauri";
- “From Thai AGROVOC thesaurus to Ontology: a case study of Thailand”;
- Agropedia;
- Agrotagger;
- AGRIS and OpenAgris;
- VocBench used for managing the FAO Biotechnology Glossary;
- VocBench used for managing the FAO Journal Authority Data (JAD) Collection;
- AIMS website.
Training
On the second and third day of the workshop, a thorough training was provided with support from Mrs Lavanya Neelam who was part of the ICRISAT team working on the revision of AGROVOC. The training started with an introduction of the tool, explaining all available functionalities, and was then followed by hands-on training sessions.
Outcome
- The participants gave positive feedback on the use of VocBench, and generally found it very user-friendly.
- Participants from Thailand and India expressed their interest in using the VocBench for developing and managing a Rice ontology and a Mango ontology, and also to use it for managing authority files.
- Participants agreed to use the VocBench for updating AGROVOC in their national languages from now on.
