AgMES

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AgMES is the abbreviation for Agricultural metadata element series (Agricultural Metadata Element Set). AgMES is the metadata standard developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) which is used to describe and search for information resources in the agricultural sector. It provides a series of metadata elements that can be used to describe all types of information resources in the fields of agriculture , forestry , fisheries , food safety, and other related fields.

There are numerous other metadata schemas for different types of information media. The following list gives a few examples:

  • Document-like information objects (DLIOs): Dublin Core , Agricultural Metadata Element Series (AgMES)
  • Events / Events: VCalendar .
  • Geographical and Regional Information: Metadata Standard for Geographical Information (ISO19115).
  • People: Friend of a friend (FOAF) , vCard .
  • Plant production and protection: Darwin Core (1.0 and 2.0) DwC.

The AgMES namespace was designed to include farm-specific extensions of expressions and improvements to fixed standard metadata namespaces such as Dublin Core , AGLS, etc. To use AgMES on DLIOs such as For example, to use publications, articles, books, websites, and documents, it must be used in conjunction with the aforementioned standard namespaces. The AgMES initiative seeks to achieve improved interoperability between information sources in the agricultural sector by providing the means to exchange information.

Describing a DLIO by AgMES means expressing its main characteristics and content in a standardized form that can easily be reused in any information system. The more institutions and organizations in the agricultural sector use AgMES to describe their DLIOS, the easier it will be to exchange data between information systems such as digital libraries and other collections of agricultural information media.

Application of AgMES

Metadata about agricultural document-like information objects (DLIOs) can be created and saved in various formats:

  • inserted into a website (in an environment like for the HTML meta tag)
  • in a separate metadata database
  • in an XML file
  • in an RDF file

AgMES defines elements that can be used in conjunction with other metadata standards such as the Dublin Core (DC) or the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) to describe a DLIO.

Creation of application profiles

Application profiles are defined as schemes which consist of data elements that are compiled and optimized by one or more namespaces specifically for a particular local application. All application profiles have the following four properties in common:

  • They refer to existing sets of metadata definition standards by extracting suitable application or demand-oriented elements from them.
  • An application profile cannot create new elements.
  • Application profiles specify the details of an application such as the schemes or controlled vocabularies. An application profile also contains information such as the format of the element value, the importance or the data type .
  • Ultimately, an application profile can explain standardized definitions, provided that they are “semantically closer or more specific”. This ability of the application profiles creates situations in which area-specific terminology is required to replace a more general one.

Sample application profiles using AgMES

  • The AGRIS application profile is a standard specifically created to improve the description, exchange and subsequent retrieval of agricultural document-like information objects (DLIOs). It is a format that enables information to be shared across dispersed bibliographic systems and it is based on well known and accepted metadata standards.
  • The Event Application Profile is a standard created to allow members of the farming community to “know” about an upcoming event and direct them to the event website for more information. The information communicated has so far been minimally interoperable between areas and organizations.

The AgMES metadata tool

The AgMES Metadata Tool is a simple application that creates metadata according to the AgMES standard for websites and other document-like resources. The user has an input mask in which he can assign a content to each element. As soon as you are satisfied with the content of each element, you can simply copy the metadata created by the tool into the (head) section of your own HTM (L) file or the complete metadata set in various formats ( HTML , XML , RDF ) as a text file save locally. The tool also allows you to extract existing metadata from an existing website and then edit it further.

AgMES and the semantic web

One of the advantages of the AgMES metadata schema is the ability to link the metadata element to controlled vocabulary. The use of controlled vocabularies provides a library indexer (or a search engine programmer) with a well-defined set of objects which can be used for describing and searching for resources. Often the values ​​can be derived from a specific thesaurus (e.g. AGROVOC ) or classification schemes.

The use of controlled vocabularies for metadata elements offers the possibility of providing the user with exactly those objects that are suitable for the description. By using URIs and machine-understandable semantics, the potential of controlled vocabularies is fully exploited. In this context, the FAO is leading the Agrarian Ontology Service (AOS) initiative with the aim of converting the traditional AGROVOC thesaurus into a semantically more powerful concept server. This should contain much more terminological and semantic information, but it will always be possible to use traditional systems such as B. Thesauri.

See also

Web links