LandVoc Workshop: Exploring AGROVOC Sub-Schemes

Last June, the Land Portal Foundation convened a dozen members to establish the LandVoc Community of Experts to contribute to the development, promotion and uptake of LandVoc, the powerful linked land governance thesaurus maintained as a sub-schema of AGROVOC.

Building on that session, the LandPortal Foundation and the LandVoc Community of Experts invite you to a new workshop to support shared learning and dialogue on the development, promotion and adoption of AGROVOC sub-schemes similar to LandVoc. This workshop comes as part of the 4th AGROVOC Annual Editorial Meeting, and is open to anyone involved in the production or use of specialised vocabularies related to food, agriculture, fisheries and land, or interested in processes of vocabulary management and adoption.

Over recent years, a number of projects, similar to LandVoc, have explored ways to provide and promote structured vocabularies for use by particular thematic communities, while also contributing to and working in partnership with the AGROVOC thesaurus coordinated by FAO. This has led to the development of AGROVOC sub-schemes, each with its own stakeholder groups, selected concepts and terms, and, in some cases, hierarchies. Through presentations and interactive break-out discussions, this workshop will explore: 

• Consultation and engagement in (sub-)vocabulary development - looking at approaches and tools for gaining broad community input in shaping vocabulary terms, hierarchies, relationships and translations, including sharing examples from recent LandVoc developments and consultations.

• Communication strategies to improve awareness of vocabularies and their use - including learning from the LandVoc communications campaign, and discussions of how to communicate the connection between AGROVOC sub-vocabularies and AGROVOC.

• Supporting (sub-)vocabulary use - exploring approaches and tools that can facilitate use of sub-vocabularies by different stakeholders.

• Measuring use and impact - addressing possible metrics for (sub-)vocabulary uptake, approaches to measure use, and ways of gathering impact stories, with an emphasis on securing ongoing support for (sub-)vocabulary development. 

This interactive workshop is designed for anyone involved in production or use of specialised vocabularies related to food, agriculture, fisheries and land, or interested in processes of vocabulary management and adoption. 

The event will take place via Zoom in English, with a mix of plenary and small-group break-out sessions where participants will have opportunities to discuss issues with peers.