Authors: Devika Madalli, Nabonita Guha Organization: Indian Statistical Institute

1. Incorporating ARGOVOC in DSpace-based
Agricultural Repositories
Dr. Devika P. Madalli
&
Nabonita Guha
Documentation Research & Training Centre
Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore

2. Overview
Some Observation on present ontology plugin
AGROVOC Thesaurus Plugin for DSpace
AGROVOC in SKOS
Difference between Thesaurus and Ontology
Moving towards Ontology
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 2

3. Some Observations
Present ontology plugin integrated with DSpace 1.4 doesn’t
support synonyms and related terms
It shows only broader and narrower relationship
It requires the conversion of OWL or SKOS representation of
AGROVOC into the native plugin format every time
AGROVOC is updated
Ideally, thesaurus input can be either in SKOS or OWL format
(can be achieved by XLST)
Cron job checks updates on AGROVOC site and downloads
either SKOS or OWL file
Alternatively, ontology should be displayed on the fly from the
AGROVOC site (idea from Dr. Johannes Keizer)
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 3

4. AGROVOC Thesaurus Plug-in
To provide controlled vocabulary support in subject description
in DSpace and depict:
Equivalence
Homographs
Broader/narrower/associated relationship
To …
Provide standard access points to document; &
Thesaurus based Indexing & Searching
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 4

5. Handling Synonyms
At the time of creating the metadata
The synonymous terms are added along with the standard
term
At the time of search
If the user enters a non-standard term, it will be replaced
by standard term, and search is performed using the
standard term
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 5

6. Handling Homographs
Homograph resolution (spelling same but different
meaning)
Can be resolved using context of the given term
At the search stage, the system will retrieve the subject
string attached to the document along with the associated
documents
Fish – agriculture
Fish – cooking
Fish – decoration
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 6

7. AGROVOC in SKOS

8. SKOS
SKOS = Simple Knowledge Organization System
Provides a model for expressing the basic structure
and content of concept schemes [1] in RDF syntax
Concept Scheme = thesaurus, classification
scheme, taxonomy, subject heading list,
terminologies, etc
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 8

9. SKOS: Classes
Classes [2]
ConceptScheme (AGROVOC, MeSH, AAT, etc)
Concept (actual terms, e.g. animals, crops, etc)
Collection (group of concepts e.g. meat cattle)
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 9

10. SKOS: Properties
Properties [2]
altLabel isSubjectOf
broader member
changeNote definition
narrower note
prefLabel primarySubject
scopeNote related
hasTopConcept subject
historyNote example
isPrimarySubjectOf subjectIndicator
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 10

11. Thesaurus Vs Ontology

12. Thesaurus is …
Controlled vocabulary tools in which relationship
between concept terms are shown as:
Equivalence = synonyms
Homographic = same spelling
Hierarchical = broader -> narrower
Associative relationships = related terms
Represents the terms denoting certain concepts
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 12

13. Ontology is …
An ontology defines the terms used to describe
and represent an area of knowledge (subject
matter) [3]
Model for the meaning of those terms
Definition of the vocabulary used
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 13

14. Cattle
COW BT
Suckler Cow
NT
NT Dairy Cow
RT
Heifers
RT
(Real world entity) RT Cow Milk
Milk yielding cows
Related Terms in AGROVOC for Cow

15. Domestic Animal
Cattle Cows
skos:prefLabel
skos:Broader skos:Related
1939
Cow milk
skos:Related
skos:Narrower skos:Narrower
Milk yielding cows
skos:Related
Suckler Cow Dairy Cow
Heifers
http://www.fao.org/aos/agrovoc#c_1939
SKOS representation of AGROVOC Terms

16. Animals
subClassOf
subClassOf
Domestic Animal Wild
subClassOf
RDF Representation of AGROVOC Terms
Cattle
subClassOf
COW
subClassOf
subClassOf
Heifers
Milk yielding cows Cow milk
Range
Domain hasByproduct

17. Current Approach
To develop a plugin which can provide thesaural
support in DSpace
Not only specific to AGROVOC, but can support
any thesaurus in DSpace represented in SKOS
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 17

18. Moving Towards Ontology
Decision regarding the nature of Information
Retrieval
Document retrieval ; or
Retrieval of exact information extracted from the document
To develop a generic framework for Agriculture
domain knowledge with scopes for further extension
for narrower domains
To incorporate the inferencing mechanism defining
certain rules (SWRL)
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 18

19. ic
ant
m
Se
Ontology-based
information search
& retrieval
d
ure
ct
S tru
Controlled Vocabulary
in formal syntax (RDF)
d
ure
ct
s tru
Un
Uncontrolled Vocabulary

20. References
1. Alistair Miles & Dan Brickley. SKOS Core Guide. W3C Working
draft 10 May 2005. http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-guide
2. Alistair Miles & Dan Brickley. SKOS Core Vocabulary
Specification. W3C Working Draft 2 November 2005.
http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-spec/
3. Dr. Leo Obrst. Presentation on the ontology spectrum & semantic
models. MITRE, Information Semantics Group, January 12 & 19,
2006.
http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/LeoObrst_20060112
/OntologySpectrumSemanticModels--LeoObrst_20060112.ppt
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 20

21. Thank You
Devika P. Madalli
devika@drtc.isibang.ac.in
Nabonita Guha
guha@drtc.isibang.ac.in
Nov. 10, 2006 Seventh Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop 21