Terminology and Controlled Vocabulary Efforts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Richard Huffine Federal Manager, EPA National Library Network September 16, 2004

EPA’s Controlled Vocabulary A hierarchical representation of terms used to describe EPA activities Concepts are “nested” and while terms may repeat, the concepts are considered to be “in context” Developed to address access via the Internet in a directory structure Represented in the Browse EPA Topics interface

Browse EPA Topics

Browse EPA Topics

EPA Search The EPA controlled vocabulary and other metadata elements are captured to improve search results in the EPA search engine Broad searches are filtered using the controlled vocabulary, metadata entries, and full-text of selected items before a full search is conducted Search results are delivered in a tiered structure that improves access to the best resources on the EPA Web site

EPA Search

Terminology Reference System The EPA’s Terminology Reference System (TRS) was created as a single resource of environmental terminology for the Agency by compiling collections of terms from EPA and other sources. The TRS is one of the EPA’s System of Registries (SoR), providing a gateway and search capability These registries are a link in EPA's information architecture and are a component to the National Environmental Information Exchange Network (Network) Specifically, the SoR was developed to support the Agency's data standards program and numerous Agency information technology initiatives

Terminology Reference System