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.