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NALT Concept Space
U.S. Department of Agriculture

National Agricultural Library Thesaurus Concept Space

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.

NALT vocabularies for search and download

  • "NALT Core", a trim NALT subscheme vocabulary, released in 2022 with 14,196 of the most frequently used agricultural concepts, including 4,396 agriculturally important organisms (taxa), and structural updates for a lean and efficient machine readable agricultural knowledge base, ideally suited for automation, machine learning, and other artificial intelligence applications for knowledge management in the machine age.
  • "NALT Full", the original NALT including all NALT concepts in NALT Concept Space, transformed into a subscheme vocabulary within the NALT Concept Space framework. The inaugural NALT Full had all of NALT Core plus over 48,000 additional agricultural related organisms (taxa) and several thousand less frequently used concepts for a total of 77,093 concepts. NALT Full will continue to include all NALT concepts, for a more granular knowledge base.
  • "NALT AWIC", Animal Welfare concepts curated by NAL's Animal Welfare Information Center (AWIC) staff. The inaugural NALT AWIC included 881 concepts, and was released in 2023.
  • "NALT Taxon", Taxonomic names have been a central use case for NALT over the years, with up to 75% of NALT concepts being taxonomical names at the initiation of the NALT for the Machine Age initiative. In 2023, the NALT Taxon vocabulary was released, and included 52,978 organisms (taxa) names important to agriculture.