With ontologies we can more fully define these relationships - creating rules for developing specific relationships - and thereby provide a means for better knowledge sharing. However, this would have to be balanced with the need for compatibility with existing systems and future interoperability.
Since the server will be the central reference resource for vocabulary control and relationship structure of agricultural terminology, we will need to utilize multiple different sources to build it. The main source will be the AGROVOC thesaurus, which already has the appropriate scope and basic relationships to serve as a base for the AOS. Other sources will include:
classifications - lists of terms often using hierarchical relationships
controlled vocabularies - controlled lists of preferred and variant terms based on concepts
thesauri - controlled vocabularies containing hierarchical relationships
authority files - controlled lists of preferred and variant names
glossaries - lists of terms with definitions
gazetteers - dictionaries of place names
subject headings lists - broad categorizations of knowledge domains
A key aspect of the AOS is that it will be multilingual. For users in all countries who need access to resources, we need to provide the ability to index and find information in any language needed. The AOS should collect and coordinate terminology, definitions and relationships in the five official languages of the FAO - English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. Additional languages can be added if necessary by those developing ontologies, if working in the mother tongue of the country is beneficial.
We will need to develop a suite of ontology tools to be used in accessing the AOS and its set of ontologies. This suite should contain tools that allow:
description - discovery of overlap in terminology and mapping of common terms and definitions
relationship building - creation of ontologies using common relationships and building new relationships
coding - storage of terms, definitions and relationships in a standard, interoperable format
indexing - using ontologies to index resources
discovery - searching and browsing by users in the AOS or in an ontology
maintenance - ontology collection, storage, dissemination and evaluation by managers
We will need to incorporate current state-of-the-art standards (RDF and XTM) in the encoding of the ontology server for the KOSs to communicate with each other effectively.
We believe that other stakeholders in the area of agriculture, forestry, fishery and nutrition and the like, who have or need Knowledge Organization Systems for their information ensembles would benefit widely from the AOS. We believe also that the development of tools and software could be inspired by the existence of a large structured system of knowledge representation.
