Using controlled vocabularies to help organize
ILRI’s information products
Peter Ballantyne
LD4D Livestock Ontologies working group meeting
Edinburgh, 12 December 2019

Where we started … (late 2009)
We wanted:
• new ‘proper’ repository
• new ‘dynamic’ web site
• new ‘social’ platforms
• organized ‘flows’ for info/knowledge products
We had:
• Multiple (home-made) websites and databases
• Many other home-made internal databases

Snapshot (Dec 2008)
PA video
WWW web
ILRInet
ILRI web
public’s
library
multimedia
contacts
news
PA news
theme
public’s
training
materials
animal
genetics
training
docs
genebank
info
blog
video
blip
ejournals
slp
cgvlibrary
beca
singer
photos
research
mgmt
bioinfo-
matics

Choices
• Make it open
• Use standard open platforms (No DIY)
• Allow, and encourage, diverse open (content re-
usable) tools and platforms to reach target
audiences
• Use simple ‘descriptors’ and metadata to organize
content for re-use
• Consistent vocabularies to facilitate ‘publishing’ not
‘archiving’

Metadata; descriptors
• AGROVOC for the repositories (CGSpace;
Data)
• ‘dublin-core’ and nowadays ‘cg-core’ for the
repositories
• ILRI-specific descriptor lists – to facilitate
publishing across platforms:
• repository, blogs, slideshare, flickr, youtube,
website, feedburner

Process
• Terms identified early 2010 in discussions with science and
comms management – the key issues/topics for ILRI. What we
want to ‘talk’ about. Over time, added new ones
• Derived from AGROVOC; or created/adapted if missing …
• Terms to help usefully present and share ILRI work; and
integrate across platforms/formats
• That could be used across social platforms
• Small number of ‘controlled’ terms; always options for
authors/editors to add others
• Used alongside controlled lists of countries, languages,
regions, institutional units, investors, CRPs, etc

What we have now
• A controlled vocabulary for ‘ILRI’; not a
‘livestock’ vocabulary
• Simple for use across platforms; to ‘publish’ and
allow re-use
• Used across most public-facing resources
• Other specialized taxonomies in ILRI – animal
breeds etc

More
https://cgspace.cgiar.org/
http://data.ilri.org/portal/
https://www.ilri.org/publications
http://ilri-comms.ilriwikis.org/Ilri_tagging_guidelines

This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.
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