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The CSA/NBII Biocomplexity Thesaurus: Current
Initiatives, Future Directions
CENDI Terminologies Workshop
Washington, DC
16 September 2004
Lisa ZollyNBII Program Office
US Geological Survey
CSA – NBII PartnershipCSA (formerly Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)
is one of the major indexers and abstractors of biological and environmental literature.
CSA became the NBII’s “Knowledge Integration Node” in FY2001.
Projects include the delivery of indexed literature citations and Web resources; the forthcoming sustainability science ejournal; and the biocomplexity thesaurus
Genesis of the Biocomplexity Thesaurus
CSA had developed a number of smaller, discipline- specific thesauri over the last several decades to support I&A work
CSA determined that these thesauri needed to be merged and reconciled to support expanding business practices
NBII had partnered with the California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES) in the mid-1990s to jointly develop a thesaurus
Resulting CERES/NBII Thesaurus was concise and useful; however, by FY2001, it was no longer comprehensive enough to cover the scope of the NBII’s regional and thematic nodes
BiocomplexityThesaurus
CSA Aquatic Sciences and
Fisheries Thesaurus
CSA Life Sciences
Thesaurus
CSA Pollution Thesaurus
CSA Ecotourism Thesaurus
CERES/NBIIThesaurus
CERES/NBIIThesaurus
CSA Sociological Thesaurus
CSA Sociological Thesaurus
Thesaurus Development Dr. Jessica Milstead performed the reconciliation and
integration of terminologies using MultiTes ~9500 terms Dr. Milstead continues to provide project support for
upgrades and additions to the Biocomplexity Thesaurus
NBII Nodes can recommend new terms for inclusion via a portlet on the NBII’s portal-based Intranet
Anticipated thematic expansion areas for the Biocomplexity Thesaurus include: Forestry Fire ecology and management Wildlife diseases
Current NBII Implementations
Publicly available for term searching at thesaurus.nbii.gov
Rotated index to be made available shortly
Current NBII Implementations
BT, NT, RTUse and use forScope notes
Current NBII Implementations: Resource Indexing
All electronic data and information resources indexed using common standards, based on Dublin Core
Current NBII Implementations: Web Site Content
Current NBII Implementations: Portal Content
Current NBII Implementations: Portal Content
Current NBII Implementations: Expertise SystemsExpertise categories based upon
terms in Biocomplexity Thesaurus
Current NBII Implementations: Literature Citations
CSA delivers citations from its Internet Database Service through the NBII and WDC portals; thesaurus terms
drive system selection of records from the database
Current NBII Implementations: NBII Image Gallery
Images are catalogued using the same cataloguing tool used for Web resources Scripts sort images to folders based upon keywords from the Biocomplexity Thesaurus and gazetteers
Current NBII Implementations: NBII Image Gallery
Current NBII Implementations: Conference Announcments
Current NBII Prototypes: Thesaurus-aided Searching Within the My.NBII Portal (Intranet)
The My.nbii.gov portal uses the Plumtree portal server to provide Intranet functionalities within the NBII’s distributed partnership network Much of the content of the public NBII node sites is also available to any public user of my.nbii.gov – no login is required to gain access to public NBII resources
Current NBII Prototypes: Thesaurus-aided Searching Within the My.NBII Portal (Intranet)
Plumtree technology allows us to “plug in” our Biocomplexity Thesaurus to the portal’s basic Search functionality The Thesaurus operates behind the scenes A user’s entry level term (e.g. invasive species) is given a rank of 1.0; exact term matches will display first in search results NT=.75 RT=.50 BT=.25
Portal is searching these term relationships, weighting the
results for all terms, sorting by weighting (“relevance”)
If the user chooses the “Advanced Search” option to search the portal, only those documents matching the query term are
included in the results, producing a smaller results set
Future Directions for the Biocomplexity Thesaurus
NBII is in the process of converting the main NBII gateway to a portal-driven “Web site.” The portal will “look” like a Web site, but act like a portal, with advanced functionalities for resource metadata, searching, and data mining. The NBII Program Office is working with Plumtree developers to make the thesaurus-facilitated searching more transparent to end-users, so they can choose to opt-in or opt-out of this kind of search, depending upon their understanding of both the biological issue at hand and their particular information need.
Future Directions for the Biocomplexity Thesaurus
NBII has many strong partnerships with international data-sharing efforts, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), and the Inter-American Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN). These groups have expressed a strong desire to leverage the tools and resources developed by the NBII to make data and information more visible and available within their own communities, as well as to the world community. NBII is exploring ways to make available resources such as our Web Resources Cataloguing Tool, Image Library, and Biocomplexity Thesaurus for information managers and the communities they serve, in their native languages.
Spanish, Portuguese, and French are likely starting pointsNBII is also participating in the UNEP EcoInformatics Working Group, which is exploring this issue
