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’.