“I say ‘avocado’, you say ‘aguacate’…or do you say ‘palta’?” The urgent need and opportunity for LAC countries to expand a vocabulary of agricultural terminology for the Americas”

Tesauro Agrícola

Lori J. Finch Thesaurus Coordinator National Agricultural Library 10301 Baltimore Avenue Beltsville, MD 20705 USA [email protected]

SIDALC 10 th Anniversary Orton Memorial Library Turrialba, Costa Rica 25 September 2009

¿Como llamarías a estas figuras? What words describe these pictures?

¿Puerco? ¿Chancho? Pig?

¿Cerdo? ¿Porcino? Swine?

¿Sus scrofa domestica? ¿Palta? Avocado?

¿Aguacate?

¿Persea americana?

Problem: Searcher must think of ALL terms to find all pertinent information.

Need for a Spanish language thesaurus…

   Where is the thesaurus that accommodates terminology used in the Americas?

Local Terminology applied by catalogers Could we use the NAL Agricultural Thesaurus as basis for a Latin American thesaurus?

Tesauro Agrícola

     2006: Translation of NAL Thesaurus 2007: Spanish edition is on Internet, with downloadable files, and CD 2008 edition: Spanish language user interface and glossary of 2400 terms Sept 2008: Visit to Orton to plan on how to work together Thanks to Marta Abarca for Kathya and Matilde for collaboration

2009 Tesauro Agrícola WIKI

  Wiki is a collaborative tool for sharing ideas and exchanging information over the web.

NAL and IICA developed a wiki for the ongoing maintenance of the thesaurus which serves as a “white board” for – supporting documentation – proposals for additions and changes to the thesaurus.

Kathya Lines visits NAL April 2009

2009 WIKI

 Kathya and Matilde contributing proposals  Some proposals from the Inaforesta WIKI project that identifies agroforestry terms  Videoconferences to discuss proposals

Today: 2009 Tesauro Agrícola

       http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt_es.shtml

2009 edition contains ~ 70,000 terms Organized into 17 categories for browsing Updated annually Web site search Downloadable in 2 eye-readable formats (PDF, TXT) and 3 machine-readable formats (XML, MARC, SKOS) English and Spanish web interfaces

Challenges of Tesauro Agrícola

      Original translation done in Chile and does not represent all dialects Needs editing and correction Dynamic – must be enriched to be useful Communication over distance Requires subject knowledge of agricultural concepts How to grow it and maintain it so that it is useful to searchers of information?

“It takes a village…”

Goal of a QUALITY thesaurus cannot be accomplished by one or two groups, needs to be a collaboration across LAC countries.  Needs diversity of contributors so that a variety of dialects are represented  Needs subject experts in agriculture  Needs Librarians / Catalogers …Needs SIDALC partners

Benefits to contribution

 Direct impact on content – Regional terms – Special interest terms – Guidance needed and welcomed  Acknowledgement of contribution  Tool for future applications  Benefits of controlled vocabulary over use of local terms

Next Steps

     Evaluation of the proposal process Evaluation of the WIKI Ideas for improvement of communication over long distance Development of training materials for those who wish to contribute Process for identifying gaps and weaknesses in the thesaurus and experts who can aid in development

Next Steps….more

    Ideas for other formats needed, including CD product What future applications are planned that could benefit from terminology?

Brainstorm …which of these can we do?

Planning and prioritizing work to fit with human resources

Gracias por su atención Thank you for your attention

La Biblioteca Nacional de Agricultura de los Estados Unidos

avanzando el acceso a la información global para la agricultura.

Lori J. Finch Thesaurus Coordinator [email protected]