Completion of AGROVOC First Phase

ICRISAT completes phase I of conversion of AGROVOC to a Concept Server.Over the past one year ICRISAT has been working in association with FAO to revise and refine the terms in the AGROVOC. The first phase of the work has been successfully completed and it will be upgraded onto an ontology in the second phase. Congratulating the team members on the completion of a very knowledge intensive work, FAO's Senior Information Officer Gudrun Johannsen writes - "let me thank you so much for the excellent work the AGROVOC team has done on the revision of AGROVOC according to the LoA! We all know that it has not been an easy task, and without your outstanding effort it would not be possible to achieve our goal to convert AGROVOC into a Concept Server."She has acknowledged AGROVOC team members for their excellent work.

Relationships

While refining the Related Terms where we use the concept to concept relationship; one of the relationship is 'indicates' and 'has symptom'. But I feel that it would be better if it is 'indicates' and 'is indicated by' as for some terms the earlier relation would not fit properly. Example:'extensographs' indicates 'rheological properties' but the reverse will not give proper meaning.May be we need to think of a better relationship.

AGROVOC Work in progress

Currently we are working on the refinement of RTs and USE/UF terms in AGROVOC. We have separated the Fisheries related terms but still not clear whether the terms such as crabs, lobsters, shellfish, mollusks, squids etc related to marine animals will go under fisheries terms.
The taxonomic classification and its hierarchical relations are consuming much of our time. But we are doing our best to give the better hierarchy. Meanwhile we are also playing around with new AGROVOC Concept Server work bench and it is pretty good that it has become little bit faster with the full AGROVOC version.

Gudrun from FAO, Rome was here in ICRISAT from 2nd September to 1st October to train the AGROVOC team at ICRISAT on the new concept server Work Bench and also on FAO term Mapping. The training sessions helped me to get an insight into the new workbench and various options available in it. We played on with it by entering at different levels of the group and got to know choices available accordingly.We need to get used to it to work on further. The new work bench has more number of relationships and I feel they are specific and required for the better refinement of the terms in AGROVOC.

AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench

adgajg

Finally...reached the end of the tunnel!

We plunged into the revision of taxonomic names about a couple of months back and finally we are out of the tunnel, carrying with us a bundle of relationships that require a little more discussion to decide and fix. I was handling plant names and Lavanya was handling insect names and we are going to share and reflect upon Our Common Problems, one taxonomic name applicable for two different common names, one common name referring to two different taxonomic names and the like.

What's in a name?

Sometimes it is semantic relations ingrained!
I could not resist my temptation to read through the entire wikipedia article when I saw this interesting picture while refining Myrtaceae terms. It is the fruit of Jabuticaba, also called Brazilian Grape Tree. The name is derived from the Tupi word Jabuti (tortoise) + Caba (place), meaning the place where you find tortoises. Aspects of biodiversity and ecological interdependency are brought out in these names in indigenous communities. Even scientific names are suggestive of the main feature of the organism. Myrciaria cauliflora aptly represents the fact that its flowers grow directly from its trunk.

Bharati Joins AGROVOC Team

Bharati joined as Senior Research Fellow, Knowledge Management & Sharing Division of ICRISAT. She is a post graduate in Agricultural Biotechnology from University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. She is currently working on AGROVOC and will be refining the RT relationships. Together Lavanya and Bharati are reviewing the hierarchies under each top term to see if they need to be revised further.

Land mobility

As a rule we are only revising and re-arranging the existing AGROVOC terms and NOT adding new terms at this stage. But during the revision of existing terms, we ARE elevating some concepts from being non-descriptors to Descriptors in their own right. Land mobility is one such concept.

“Land mobility” is the movement of land parcels between farmers through sales or exchange. - (FAO Land Tenure Training Materials on Land Consolidation Pilot Projects)

This concept is gaining importance in the wake of urban-rural migration, expansion/encroachment of urban structures (roads and buildings) into rural areas, political promises and women asserting their property rights.

Poly-hierarchies and the two proposals

Poli-hierarchies: yes, it may create confusions and mix concepts
(organisms, such as "Apis mellifera capensis" over categories such as "Queen
bees")... but unfortunately this is what we would end up to have (and is fine
for now). The tools should takes care to visualize or not all the common
names or scientific names or exclude part of them.

After a deeper analysis i found that in your picture we may have problems in
agrovoc or in the concept server as we are planning. Therefore I am proposing
2 possible solutions:

3a) mix the hierarchies in order to have a unique hierarchy.

3b) keep hierarchies separated, in this case just relate concepts that may
belongs to the 2 hierarchies by RT (refined appropriately).

Personally I like better case 3b, which is similar to consider the
potato-plant organism different from the potato-fruit organism.... so
consider the 'bee' organisms related the the 'bees' as a specific category of
insects. I like very much this idea. - Ms. Sini Margherita

Even the other team members voted for option 3b.

Some thoughts on Polyhierarchies

Although the use of poly hierarchies is convincing in theory, in practice it
is likely to create some confusion.

Instead we prefer to have common terms as one hierarchy with organisms as Top
term and taxonomic terms as another hierarchy with some other top term, say
taxonomic terms.

It will be a `ladder' structure with the rungs formed by the `sameAs'
relations. It is almost similar to the original guidelines, but for that now
MORE (two) descriptors are allowed for the same concept.

(Note: common terms hierarchy may not exactly be parallel to the taxonomic
one. There could be some gaps, as in the case of sub order, and sub genus
levels, in which case the sameAs relation doesn't exist)

This seems to be alright from the thesaurus point of view, but we are not
sure how it fits into the concept server and work bench contexts,
particularly when we want to expand the search for all the stem borers.

To achieve this, should we necessarily have all kinds of stem borers as NTs
under stemborers? When they are in different hierarchies also, they can be
brought together by RT relation. If RT relation is not amenable for handling
in the concept server, should we devise any other new relation, say SC (Same
Concept) or ST Same term?

Since at present all the common names and taxonomic names are mixed up, we
would first add and/or link common names to existing taxonomic names, and
taxotomic names to existing common names.

Catching up with running time!

With the approaching deadlines, AGROVOC team was away from this blog for a while, taking stock of the situation and working on ways to take this mammoth task to completion. With more team members on board now, the revision and refinement process has gained momentum and heading towards the finish line.

Sabitha joins AGROVOC team

Ms. Sabitha working as a Programmer in the Knowledge Management and Sharing division of ICRISAT joins AGROVOC team. She will be editing term labels and term status in the AGROVOC master copy.

All the best ...Priyanka ...

...for your new life journey. Wedding bells are ringing for Priyanka. 30th January had been her last working day at ICRISAT (at least in the first innings). It was a day of sweet n sour excitement as it was the last working day for two of our colleagues, Priyanka and Pritpal. Ms. Pritpal is also getting married this month. She has been working on topic maps and concept maps.

Priyanka plans to pursue a career in Fashion designing after her marriage. In fact, AGROVOC donned its new outfit largely because of Priyanka's painstaking efforts in weaving together the revised specifications from excel sheets into BT/NT/RT relations in the refinement tool. Understanding the relations from the excel sheet and making the changes to the master copy was a difficult task. She did everything with a simple smile without a complaint. But I could see the strain in her eyes after doing that monotonous and intricate job. All the best ...Priyanka ... from AGROVOC team at ICRISAT.

A non-descriptor referring to two Descriptors

Not allowed? But I felt its need while revising/refining terms under
Alternative agriculture.
Biological farming includes:
* organic farming
* biodynamic farming
Making `Biological farming' a Descriptor is still undecided. In case it is left as a Non-descriptor, I would like to make it a broader synonym of `organic farming' as well as `biodynamic farming'.

Now my dilemma is:

(1) Should `biological farming' be made a Descriptor and NT under alternative agriculture? Should `organic farming' and `biodynamic farming' become NTs under `biological farming'?
(2) Should `biological farming' be left as a Non-descriptor and refine it as a `nearSynonym' for `alternative agriculture'? (or) Can I make it a `broaderSynonym' for both `organic farming' and `biodynamic farming'?



(image source: http://info.asapsupplier.com/index.php?pageid=1225)

Refining RTs

Very often the RT terms ARE related, but it becomes difficult to specify HOW EXACTLY they are related. Following is one example.


queen bees
BT honey bees
RT queenlessness
RT Requeening
How should these RTs be refined? queenlessness isPropertyOf queenbees? Or something better? and
honey bees `isObjectOfActivity' requeening?
Background:
There were about 2,090 ref. for `Queenlessness' in google search. It seemed to be an important concept and hence was made a descriptor. It is placed under state and the USE term, 'queen bees' is made an RT.
'Queenrightness' is the presence of queen bee and didn’t seem to be an important descriptor. (Only when something goes wrong, it becomes important!) Therefore Queenrightness is left as a non-descriptor, but is made a non-descriptor for 'queenlessness' instead of for `queenbees' and refined as `antonymOf’.

It would not have been possible before!

I wonder how it would have been to revise AGROVOC sans internet and the innumerable web resources for reference. Perhaps it would have taken a whole day or even more to physically get hold of the dictionaries and encyclopedias and turn the pages back and forth to study terms. But now the single command `define:' on google serves as the magical `open sesame' to the world of knowledge revealing the myriad of meanings in a row. Another useful site is the `Answers.com' (encyclodictionalmanacapedia) which pulls and presents information from a number of sources starting from general dictionaries to more specific ones. The ultimate entry would be from wikipedia. Wikipedia is my staple diet and I particularly like its lucid style in making terms and concepts more clear.

Without Wikipedia, it would not have been possible for me to work on AGROVOC. I owe a lot to Wikipedia!

Let Prosperity and Peace Prevail!!

Santa came to bless AGROVOC Team!

`What a long list of terms! ...'. Santa sighed!!

"Features" as a new topterm

Proposal of new top term "features"

While searching BT for 'genetic maps' we came across the term "genomic feature", which would be the BT for genetic maps. This term was proposed by Ms. Jayasree Balaji(Scientist, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, ICRISAT) when we had discussion with her on some of the genetics terms which doesn't have BT. With the out come of this discussion we thought of proposing new top term "features". The same discussion was conveyed to Ms.Gudrun and Ms. Margherita on skype meeting, they also agreed to add this top term.

Revision of common names and scientific names

Please refer to the document posted in the dgroup space.

A very eventful month for AGROVOC team at ICRISAT

Ms. Gudrun Johannsen's visit to ICRISAT made the month very eventful for ICRISAT's AGROVOC team. Gudrun Johannsen - Senior Information Specialist, FAO, has been working on the AGROVOC Thesaurus since 1990, and also participated in its translation into German. Currently she is responsible for the content management of AGROVOC.

Ms. Gudrun has been at ICRISAT to guide the team in finalizing the BT/NT relationships, particularly the genetics and plant breeding terms. She has been adding useful information resources to an already long list of thesauri including the NAL thesaurus, GEMET thesaurus,the Biocomplexity thesaurus, FAOTERM, the MeSH browser and the all inclusive World Bank Thesaurus. (It never denies!)



We see her going patiently and passionately through each of the resources till she finds a convincing definition or explanation. It was an inspiring and instructional interaction for us and this would not have been possible through e-mails or skype conferences.

A non-descriptor to a non-descriptor?!

In theory, it may not be acceptable! But in practice, we feel that it is very much required, particularly in the case of spelling variants.

Semantic relationships

The most common types of semantic relationships among terms are:

the equivalence relationship,
the hierarchical relationship and
the associative relationship

and there are three kinds of hierarchical relationships:

Generic relationship
Instance relationship
Whole-part relationship

The `Whole-part' relationship is between terms where one concept is inherently included in another. Four major types of this relationship occur:
systems and organs of the body,
geographic locations,
disciplines or fields of discourse, and
hierarchical organizational, corporate, social or political structures.

(Source: Consumer Egg Thesaurus - http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/libr512/01-02-wt2/thesauri/Eggs/structure.htm)

New Top Terms

`Strategies' and `Systems' are the new top terms proposed. Addition of `Events' as another Top Term is also being considered. Already `Phenomena' and `Resources' were added to the initial list of Top Terms. It was decided to keep `Technology' as a separate top term. Now, we find that it is a top term in the subjects listing of `Knowledge 2008' portal as well. (http://www.success.co.il/knowledge/encyclopedia/index.html)

The Discovery of an Information Resource

Yesterday, Lavanya came running to share the joy of discovering `Definitions.net' with us. We were surprised at not stumbling upon that site earlier. Did WE really miss it? Or IT missed us? Or is it a damn new site and we were among the early birds? We were excited! We even left a message to them, waiting to receive a reply. Today, there was a message in Ms. Lavanya's mail box!


We understand that it is not a totally new resource, but that it is STANDS4 that has morphed into Abbreviations.com. "Abbreviations.com is a unique reference resource which focuses entirely on definitions and classifications of short hands such as acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms. It is backed up by a large community of volunteering editors and it provides its users with a diverse disciplines directory, a state of the art meta-search engine and free desktop search tools."



We are particularly happy with the elegant design and lay out of the site. I was quickly scrolling down to see the pictures that our word in question has pulled in. I make a visual guess and very often I find images that are quite close to my guess! It is indeed a very handy tool while adding pictures to messages and presentations.


We were very happy to find some good definitions and I was double happy when I didn't find something, as there is a `Get a Free T-Shirt Offer' on becoming an editor!

Of the terms - Land and Landscape

In Agrovoc, Landscape is an NT under under Land. For indexing, such type of grouping was found to be convenient. But in the revised version, only `is a' relation and `instance of' relation define the BT/NT relationship.

Since, the relation between Land and Landscape is neither an `is a' relation nor `an instance' relation, Landscape cannot be an NT under Land. It can at best be an RT.

Then, what should be the BT for Landscape? Should it be Physiographic features? Please comment.

(Note: The UF ref. for Physiographic features is Physical landscape features, i.e. Physical landscape features USE 5834 - Physiographic features)

Botany Vs Plant sciences

Botany and Plant sciences appear to be synonyms. But at present they are two different terms in Agrovoc. Botany (Term code 1023) and Plant sciences (5981).

Could there be some reason for giving them separately?

One possibility is that Plant sciences could be that part of botany dealing with higher plants while Phycology(Algology) and Mycology deal with algae and fungi respectively.

Another possibility is that Plant sciences includes botany and perhaps other subjects as are applicable to plants. (examples could be chemistry concerning the extraction and distillation of plant products, pharmacology concerning the use of plant constituents for medicines etc.)

Please comment.

Top Concepts

Currently Ms. Lavanya is working on the Natural resources hierarchy and Products hierarchy. Ms. Geetanjali is working on the Social science related terms. Ms. Priyanka and Ms. Prasanthi are looking at the Computer terms and their relationships. This gives them a brief break from their regular work of making changes to AGROVOC data base from Excel sheets.

The starting points in AGROVOC will the Top Concepts - Super BT or TT.

Based on the analysis of FAO staff, the following 14 Top concepts are suggested:


Activity
Entity
Group
Location
Measure
Method
Object
Organism
Process
Property
State
Subject
Substance
Time

Later on `Phenomena' is also added to this list.




Ms. Lavanya, Ms. Geetanjali, Ms. Prasanthi and Ms.Priyanka can keep these categories in mind and post the terms in their areas of work into these categories.

FAO guidelines for Managing AGROVOC

AGROVOC team members are requested to go through the

Basic Guidelines for Managing AGROVOC

document available at ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/ai144e/ai144e00.pdf

The document is prepared by Margherita Sini, Gudrun Johannsen, Gauri Salokhe, with the contribution of Anita Liang and Dagobert Soergel. It covers the topics like:

Resources for translations and maintenance, Guidelines for translations, Adding new terms to AGROVOC, General conventions, Managing relationships in AGROVOC – using the maintenance tool and the refinement tool, AGROVOC structure and content revision, and AGROVOC online

AGROVOC term searching made more versatile

It was a pleasant surprise to see the new feature:

starting with end with containing text exact match exact word

...when I was routinely copying a word in the search window. This bonanza of options would really help searchers to do all kinds of (gimmicks) string based searches. On several occasions, I felt the need for something like `end with' option, but it remained latent until someone asked for that particular feature during the Agrovoc e-conference.

Thanks to Ms. Sini Margherita who worked for long hours over this weekend to save several (wo)man-hours now for those of us who are working on Agrovoc refinement and several hours of the future Agrovoc users. It is indeed a stitch in time!

RT refinement - Issue no. 3

In existing AGROVOC, Sci. Taxonomic name and Common name are related by Use-UF relations. While revising, the common name is made descriptor and made an RT to the Sci. Taxonomic name.

Now the RT s linked to the sci. taxonomic name in the former hierarchy are linked to the common name, which in turn linked to the sci. tax. name. Is it alright?

Online tutorial to carry out AGROVOC refinement

AGROVOC refinement at ICRISAT is being carried out by a group of experts. Some of them work from remote locations and hence the task description and guidelines are given on-line along with introduction to AGROVOC itself.

The following modules are planned.

Module 1: What is AGROVOC?

Module 2: How is AGROVOC structured?

Module 3: AGROVOC Revision and Refinement

Module 4: Description of Tasks

Module 5: Specifying Revisions and Refinements in an Excel Template

Online tutorial modules for guiding the new members of AGROVOC team

The AGROVOC team at ICRISAT is going to get help from a group of domain experts to refine the concept relationships. Dr. Balaji suggested development of online tutorial modules to introduce to the domain experts, the concept and structure of AGROVOC and guide them through the process of its revision and refinement.

The PPT presentation developed during the initial stqages of the project will be revised and used for this purpose.

A message was posted on Km4dev-l seeking to suggest any guidelines or manuals.
Ms. Nancy White has suggested to contact IMARK team at FAO - http://www.imarkgroup.org/index_en.asp

Discussions and Doubts

The excel worksheets are reviewed. Ms. Prasanthi and Ms. Priyanka have suggested adding one more field indicating if a term is taxonomic or otherwise. It is required to specify the same while making changes in the database. The additional field, TN/CN i.e. Taxonomic name/Common name has been added.

Clarification required on: Issue 1

Should Taxus baccata be made an NT under all the four Related Terms – Drug plants, Hedging plants, Timber trees and Ornamental woody plants? This is just one example.

	UF		15460 - Yews (EN)
	UF		74892 - this term does not exist in EN
	BT		7625 - Taxaceae (EN)
	NT		7633 - Taxus baccata (EN)
	RT		2393 - Drug plants (EN)
	RT		3530 - Hedging plants (EN)
	RT		7776 - Timber trees (EN)
	RT		34067 - Ornamental woody plants (EN)
	RT		34917 - Taxol (EN)

Clarification required on: Issue 2

(Term code 4333) Liliiflorae: This order corresponded roughly to the later order Liliales. Today Art 17 forbids the use of this name in the rank of order.- Near synonym – how to handle this?

From Concepts to Concept Server

The two new members, Ms. Kaila Priyanka and Ms. Yerramareddy Prasanthi started making changes to the AGROVOC Master copy from excel sheets which specify the necessary revisions and refinements to be carried out.

Agrovoc Revision and Refinement work gains momentum

The FAO's Information Management Specialist, Ms. Sini Margherita's visit to ICRISAT gave new fillip to the Agrovoc Revision and Refinement work. Progress under each task was reviewed. The next course of action and further directions are discussed and agreed upon. AGROVOC team at ICRISAT was trained in the nuances of using the AGROVOC refinement tool. The Concept Server Workbench was also demonstrated and explained.

Virtual tour of Plant biodiversity

Thanks to the Agrovoc Refinement project for it has given me an opportunity to have a virtual tour of the fairer species of nature's creation. Even if I had become a horticulturist as I wished during my childhood days, I wouldn't have been able to grow those many of them. Moreover, for this assignment I don't delve deep into the technical nuances but would be only visiting each of the taxonomic divisions looking for synonyms of common names and scientific names. This makes me feel like a butterfly moving from a bush here and a flower there, lapping up the sweetness of language manifested in the common names of plants.

Please clarify to classify !

While organizing the terms into a semantic web, I sometimes wonder where to put certain terms! Some terms seem to belong to more than one category, with the different meanings they connote as a noun and as a verb. Certain other terms seem to remain aloof, not fitting into any of the identified categories. (Pl. see the previous post for the categories)

We earnestly request you to think over the following terms and help us to classify them better. You can give your comments in the comments field.

Mankind

Individuals

Occupations

Entrepreneurship

Risk

Needs

Agrovoc terms being organized under Top Concepts

The first task was to set the BT/NT relationships for the Agrovoc Descriptors. All the descriptors, starting with those without a BT, are being assigned to one of the Top Concepts like Organisms, Substances, Activities, Subject, Phenomena, Groups, Measure and Time. About 15 such concepts are identified so far and are being refined during the course of the work.

In the process some of the non-descriptors having UF and UF+ relations are converted into descriptors and made as NTs under appropriate terms.

Each of the revised relations are being reviewed by Ms. Sini Margherita and Ms. Gudrun Johannsen of the FAO.

A semantic marathon!

Concepts in AGROVOC are all interrelated owing to the multidisciplinary nature of the subjects it addresses. Fixing them in rigid hierarchies is by no means totally convincing. Nevertheless, some kind of mapping concepts into a more semantic structure is required in the wake of new technologies.

Before embarking on the task, some hierarchies in AGROVOC are studied to feel the tips of the iceberg.
After this, hierarchies of each top term, i.e. terms without ant BT relation are studied alphabetically.

Task to be accomplished

The AGROVOC Thesaurus is currently structured as a traditional thesaurus and is stored in a relational database. It is the foundation for a new structure, more semantically organized, that FAO is planning to release, called the Concept Server, CS. Within the framework of the conversion to a concept server, all these traditional thesaurus relationships need to be refined. This revision primarily includes:

1) Revision and refinement of all BT/NT relationships and identification of real hierarchical relationships which can be represented as ‘suclass of” / “is_a” or as “is an instance of”. (28,625 BTs and 28,617 NTs)
2) Revision and refinement of all RT relationships. (28,219 RTs)
3) Revision of scientific terms and corresponding common names.
4) Revision of all terms which do not have broader terms and identify those that can to be assigned to one or more broader terms.
5) Revision and refinement of USE/UF/UF+ relationships. (19,158 Use, 17,386 UF and 1,775 UF+)

We started this blog to share our on going work on Agrovoc Revision and Refinement entrusted to ICRISAT by FAO. We seek your suggestions and support in restructuring Agrovoc so as to make it more amenable for semantic searching.