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The FBA controlled vocabulary enhances information retrieval and covers all topics held on AEDA, from agriculture to zygotes and everything in between. We decided to build our own vocabulary as we required a unique and robust system to cover the range of materials we hold, for example we have a number of geographic terms to cover the catchments that are not found in other vocabularies. The vocabulary is a thesaurus, terms are organised as part of hierarchy meaning all 8,000+ terms are organised under 25 top terms. All terms have defined relationships, such as broader term, narrower term, related term, and also semantic relationships such as ‘is a geographic feature of’ and ‘this term is used for’ in order to provide further refinement. Definitions are provided on as many terms as possible to aid disambiguation, similarly scope notes indicate the defined use for each term.

In order to aid searching we have split the vocabulary into three sections: subject; geographic; taxonomic. You can search for specific terms either alphabetically using the Search box, or from the alphabetic list on the drop down list.

We are continuing to build our vocabulary, adding new terms as the breadth of information held on AEDA increases. If you have a question about the vocabulary or would like to get suggest a new term, please email: vocabulary@fba.org.uk