Research On Construction And Application Of Knowledge Organization Systems For Agricultural History

Collecting, collating, processing and utilizing historical materials are always the primary preconditions and methods in historical research. It is the fine tradition that attaches importance to the collection of historical materials in the field of agricultural history. The subject of agricultural history, which has developed for about one hundred years, has created a great number of monographs and articles. Its literature is the fruits of Chinese agricultural history research, and also become a new resource for the research. However, this latter-day research literature has not been colleted, processed and organized, so that they are hard to be accessed quickly and exactly. In information age, information technology and network technology have impact on the production, organization, access, transmission and utilization of information resources of agricultural history. This dissertation adopts theories and methods of information organization to organize the agricultural history literature, aided by computer. It starts with the investigation and collection of the latter-day research literature, and then study on the construction of agricultural history information resources, the design and construction of knowledge organization systems for agricultural history (hereinafter referred to as KOSAH) and the applications of KOSAH. This research could provide new information resources and tools to the research of agricultural history, and speed up the modernization of research on agricultural history. The main topics of the dissertation are:(1) Collection of agricultural history research literature. This research collects more than thirty thousand modern research literature about Chinese agricultural history through literature search and field survey. But most of the literature is printed on the papers, so they are hard to be conserved, transmitted and utilized. Hence, we rely on digital processing platform to transform the paper-based literature to digital ones, and then construct a digital collection by organizing them. In order to improve description ways, organization methods and information retrieval services, we design and construct the KOSAH to describe and organize the digital collection of agricultural history literatures.