The thesaurus is organized into 17 subject categories, indicated by the "Subject Category" designation. The subject categories are used to browse the Thesaurus in a specific discipline or subject area.
The subject scope of agriculture is broadly defined in the thesaurus, and includes terminology in the supporting biological, physical and social sciences. Biological nomenclature comprises a majority of the terms in the thesaurus and is located in the “Taxonomic Classification of Organisms” Subject Category. Political geography is mainly described at the country level.
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Description
The Thesaurus is an online vocabulary of agricultural terms in English and Spanish and is cooperatively produced by the National Agricultural Library, USDA and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture as well as other Latin American agricultural institutions belonging to the Agriculture Information and Documentation Service of the Americas (SIDALC). The NAL Agricultural Thesaurus (NALT) was first published in 1967 and converted to SKOS in 2019 then released by the National Agricultural Library in 2002, with in-depth coverage of agriculture, biology, and related disciplines. The Spanish language version of NALT was first published in May 2007 under the Spanish language name "Tesauro Agrícola", and was created in cooperation with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and other Latin American agricultural institutions belonging to the Agriculture Information and Documentation Service of the Americas (SIDALC). In 2022 NALT was redesigned as part of the Library's "NALT for the Machine Age" initiative, and is a state-of-the-art multischeme concept space with added structural features for enhanced scalability and machine readability. Inaugural schemes included NALT Core, and NALT Full.
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Initial created on
January 1, 2019.
For additional information, contact
Sujata Suri (sujata.suri@ars.usda.gov) and Jennifer Woodward (jennifer.woodward@usda.gov).
The thesaurus is primarily used for indexing and for improving retrieval of agricultural information. Currently, the thesaurus is the indexing vocabulary for the National Agricultural Library's bibliographic database of citations to agricultural resources, AGRICOLA. The Food Safety Research Information Office (FSRIO) and Agricultural Network Information Center (AgNIC) also use the NALT as the indexing vocabulary for their information systems. In addition, the NALT is used as an aid for locating information at the Agricultural Research Service, Economic Research Service and AgNIC web sites and databases.
Redesigned for the machine age as part of the Library's "NALT for the Machine Age" initiative, NALT 2024 is a state-of-the-art multischeme concept space with added structural features for enhanced scalability and machine readability.
