Industry-wide linguistic instruments: The role in information support of scientific research in Russia’s agricultural industry

The studies were accomplished at the Central Scientific Agricultural Library (CSAL) to update the industry-wide linguistic instruments used in the Library’s Information Retrieval System and union catalog of the research institutions’ libraries of the Agroindustrial Complex (AIC) of Russia. The set of linguistic tools is briefly described; the two-level model of the linguistic support structure is introduced. The significance and advantages of using information retrieval languages in the Automated Information-Retrieval System are discussed. The purpose of the study was to improve the information support of research in the AIC in terms of actualization of the database (BD) of the Information Retrieval Thesaurus in Agriculture and Food and the database “Authority File (AF) of Scientific Research Institutions (SRI) in the AIC”. Brief descriptions of these information retrieval languages and their functions are included. The functions of the Information-Search Thesaurus are: to index documents and inquiries; to reflect the paradigmatic relations between lexical units; to control and normalize lexis in agriculture and food; to provide unified and formalized information representation in AGROS database; to expand automatically document search profiles; it also functions as a terminological guide in agriculture and food. As the guide, it retrieves the names of institutions since the foundations date; it can be also used for constructing the bibliographic record element (organization’s name. or corporate author); and retrieves information from information resources. The procedures for adding new lexical items and revising the previously included data are described.