Agriculture & Natural Resources Librarian
Maggie Albro
she/her/hers
Contact:
Pendergrass Library
2407 River Drive, A113D5
Knoxville, TN 37996
2407 River Drive, A113D5
Knoxville, TN 37996
865-974-8116
Subjects: Agriculture
Contact Pendergrass Library
- Email: agvetlib@utk.edu
- Text: 865-320-9885
Agriculture-Related Standardized Vocabularies
Standardized vocabularies are lists of preferred terms within a discipline. Standardized vocabularies can be used in metadata to help increase the consistency of content and decrease the ambiguity of terms. Below is a list of standardized vocabularies that are used in agricultural sciences and related fields.
- National Agricultural Library's Agriculture ThesaurusThis is an English and Spanish vocabulary of agriculture, biology and related fields. It is available as Linked Open Data.
- AGROVOCAGROVOC is a standardized vocabulary with terms available in 21 different languages. It covers topics of interest to the Food and Agriculture Organization such as food, nutrition, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and environment.
- Biocomplexity ThesaurusThis thesaurus is a compilation of the CERES/NBII Thesaurus and four CSA thesauri covering Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries, Life Sciences, Pollution, and Sociology. It also includes terms from the fire ecology and management community.
- United States Board on Geographic NamesThis thesaurus covers geographic domestic names, foreign names, Antarctic names, feature names and undersea feature names.
Data Documentation
Providing descriptive documentation of your data is essential for being able to identify, find, access, and use the data in the future. Documentation is important not only for other researchers who may want to use your data, but also for yourself. Data documentation helps you remember the details of your project that may be forgotten over time. Data documentation is easier and much less time consuming if it is performed at each stage of the research process instead of waiting until the end of your project.
Metadata Standards
What is Metadata?
- Metadata is a subset of a project's documentation. Metadata should follow standardized formats and answer questions such as "who?, what?, when?, where?, and why?" about the data.
Metadata should be generated using metadata standards that are common in your field of study. Below is a list of commonly used standards in the science communities.
- AgMES - Agricultural Metadata Element SetA semantic standard developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, AgMES enables description, resource discovery, interoperability and data exchange of different types of information resources in all areas relevant to food production, nutrition and rural development.
- CF (Climate and Forecast) Metadata ConventionsThe CF standard was originally framed as a standard for data written in netCDF format, with model-generated climate forecast data particularly in mind. However, it is equally applicable to observational datasets, and can be used to describe other formats. It is a standard for “use metadata” that aims both to distinguish quantities (such as physical description, units, and prior processing) and to locate the data in space–time.
- CSDGM - Content Standard for Digital Geospatial MetadataThe Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) developed the Content Standard for Digital Geospatial Metadata to document GIS vector, raster and point data. CSDGM was the US Federal Metadata Standard and continues to be widely used; however, US federal agencies are now encouraged to transition to ISO 19115.
- Darwin CoreDarwin Core is body of standards that includes a glossary of terms (in other contexts these might be called properties, elements, fields, columns, attributes, or concepts) intended to facilitate the sharing of information about biological diversity by providing reference definitions, examples, and commentaries. The Darwin Core is primarily based on taxa, their occurrence in nature as documented by observations, specimens, samples, and related information.
- DIF - Directory Interchange FormatAn early metadata initiative from the Earth sciences community, intended for the description of scientific data sets. It inlcudes elements focusing on instruments that capture data, temporal and spatial characteristics of the data, and projects with which the dataset is associated. It is defined as a W3C XML Schema.
- EML - Ecological Metadata LanguageEML is a metadata language specifically designed for describing ecological and environmental science data.
- ISO 19115 Geographic Information -- MetadataAn internationally-adopted schema for describing geographic information and services. It provides information about the identification, the extent, the quality, the spatial and temporal schema, spatial reference, and distribution of digital geographic data.
Metadata standard descriptions were borrowed from the Digital Curation Centre's Website. - Digital Curation Center's Disciplinary Metadata StandardsTo find additional metadata standards in agriculture or the sciences, browse through DCC's extensive metadata guidance materials.
Links to metadata creation tools are also available on the disciplinary metadata pages.
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