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NALT Concept Space
U.S. Department of Agriculture

2024 NALT 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.
Stay tuned for more sub-schemes in 2024/2025!

New NALT Structural Features

  • Streamlined top concepts reflect USDA programs and services to support data linkages, transparency, and enhance agriculture research and information discoverability.
    • Animals, Livestock, One Health
    • Economics, Trade, Law, Business, Industry
    • Farms, Agricultural Production Systems
    • Fields of Study
    • Forestry, Wildland Management
    • Geographical Locations
    • Human Nutrition, Food Safety and Quality
    • Natural Resources, Conservation, Environment
    • Plant Production, Gardening
    • Research, Technology, Methods
    • Rural Development, Communities, Education, Extension
    • Taxonomic Hierarchy
  • Maintained natively as linked data graph, also known as knowledge graph (SKOS concept scheme).
  • Knowledge graph enables linked open data mappings across the internet, harnessing the power of the semantic web.
  • Mapping to other resources - Library of Congress Subject Headings, CAB Thesaurus, AGROVOC, Global Agricultural Concept Space (GACS), and Wikidata. NALT 2022 mappings have increased since last year by 70% to 50,275.
  • NALT persistent uniform resource identifiers (URIs) are upgraded to HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure), ensuring secure access to NALT concept descriptions. Legacy HTTP NALT URIs are currently supported by redirects.
  • NALT concept types (Organism, Chemical, Product, Geographical, Topic) express the most salient features of the concept space.
  • Product-to-organism and the reverse relationships are added to capture deeper knowledge of agricultural production from farm to fork.
  • New backend workflows, protocols, and tools to add new sub-schemes, and for improved, routine validation, consistency, and quality checking.
  • The NAL project "NALT for the Machine Age" along with interested agricultural subject matter expert communities, is working to create additional sub-schemes within the NALT concept space.

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