1. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 AOS Project And Realization

2. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 November 2001 FAO launches the AOS Initiative 1. AOS workshop in Rome Building of a Launch Group for the AOS Decision about Prototypes But extreme scepticism about the usability “Ontologies”, “RDF”, “Semantic Web” were very, very strange words at that time, nearly embarrassing to use

3. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 May 2004 RDF and OWL have become official Recommendations by the W3C The last Gartner report declared Taxonomies/Ontologies to one of the key technologies of the next year Everyone uses the word Ontology without being embarrassed BUT

4. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 May 2004 There is still no AOS The Launch Group dissociated soon after the 2. Workshop in Oxford None of the decided prototypes has been materialized as it was planned So did we fail?

5. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 By No Means! In 2001 we were anticipating knowledge, technology and institutional availability for the introduction of semantic technology into Agricultural Information Systems And we were right to do so

6. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Where are we today? - Awareness Awareness has grown, who today denies that semantic matters? 5 AOS Workshops and various publications had an impact (We get now invitations to other conferences) The AGROVOC downloads have risen to about 5-10/month Similar initiatives are following (Ecoterm)

7. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Where are we today? - Research Text To Onto ~ 100 domain Specific documents AGROVOC Revised Ontology Pruner List of frequent terms Pruned Agrovoc: ~3000 concepts Ontology Editor (OIModeler) Merging & Refinement 1 st acquisition approach 2 nd acquisition approach

8. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004

9. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Where are we today? - Applications First Portals in FAO using RDFS encoded Ontologies The Fishery Ontology is a very ambitious project to integrated information access in that domain Participation in projects on CWR, Food Safety….. Transferring bibliographical databases in ontological structures Other projects

10. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Where are we today? - Funding The AOS by itself needs a stronger institutional backbone to attract donor money GIL has attracted (is in preparation for) donor money in smaller projects (EU 6 th framework, CGIAR trusts)

11. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Do We Need to change the AOS concept? Tim Berners Lee: The web is like a big relational database without relations And every one knows: wildly added table, records, non defined relations will lead to data corruption That is where the AOS projects wants to contribute.Defining meaningful concepts and relations for common use.

12. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 We Do Not Need to change the AOS concept! Discussions and choices for amendments to components Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Federated storage and description facility for Knowledge Organization Systems Extraction of KOS KOS uses components to build an application Users search and browse application using components User feedback Adding of more KOS

13. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 The Agricultural Ontology Service is an approach to organize knowledge organization systems that is –International The Internet must become plurilingual –Multidisciplinary The area of subjects is broad and needs various inputs

14. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 –Cooperative different expert knowledge has to be associated and used –Distributed no central ownership should be looked for –Coordinated Coordination must ensure reusability and standardization

15. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 Where are we today – lessons learned Using existing Ontologies (bibliographical databases) Put bits and pieces together Reform AGROVOC Resolve the AGROVOC/ CABTHESAURUS/ NAL –Thesaurus relation Go for Microfunding Get the institutional framework bigger

16. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 The Information Management Clearinghouse More and more organizations are concerned about consistency and coherence in Agricultural Information Systems May 2003: DFID workshop about this topic. In the Report FAO is asked to seek for a clearinghouse on Standards

17. Library and Documentation Systems Division Johannes Keizer 5 th AOS workshop, Beijing May 2004 The next steps in the AOS initiative (Many small ones – Portals, Domain Ontologies, collaborations, funding proposals) The AOS Concept and Terminology Server (Webservice) Manifesto for the “Semantic Standards” network Next Coherence workshop in September in Rome