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Astronomy Librarians’ Roles and the Unified Astronomy Thesaurus Sharon E. Hunt, NSF NOIRLab https://astrothesaurus.org/ What Is the UAT? ● a freely available, high-quality open thesaurus of astronomy and astrophysics terms formalizing astronomical concepts and their interrelationships ● a common vocabulary providing semantic enrichment to the scientific literature to improve how astronomical research is indexed, searched, and shared Benefits of the UAT ● High-quality keywords make literature searches faster and more effective, improve discoverability, and assist readers in judging the suitability of a publication to their interests. ● The controlled vocabulary broadens the impact of scientific work and facilitates interoperability with other systems, aiding in cross-disciplinary research. ● For researchers, aids in identifying relevant publications, with its term normalization, concept disambiguation, and concept hierarchy. ● For publishers, provides an accurate and up-to-date vocabulary reflecting the input of subject matter experts. ● For databases, provides high-quality metadata to help with indexing for searching and automated discovery services based on AI. ● For data archives, provides an unified vocabulary to aid in interoperability between archives. History ● The UAT is the most recent iteration of efforts to develop a keyword classification system for astronomical concepts and entities. ● The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has been owner and community steward of the UAT since 2012. The AAS provides the UAT to the astronomical community so that professional astronomers have a common, controlled vocabulary that facilitates the discovery of their research. UAT Working Group ● Established by the AAS in June 2024, the UATWG manages, maintains, and improves the UAT. ● Activities are focused on expanding and refining the taxonomy, making technical improvements, creating staffing options, and producing informational materials. ● Collaborative effort of individuals with varied skillsets, including librarians, astronomers, publishers, and data scientists. Using the UAT ● The UAT is designed to be a polyhierarchy, meaning that for some concepts there are multiple paths to get to it starting from top-level concepts. ● Browse the UAT Thesaurus ○ Search function for concepts ○ Alphabetical Browse ○ Hierarchical Browse ● For each concept, provides narrower and broader concepts, alternate terms, definitions, scope notes Astronomy Librarians’ Roles ● For bibliographers, the UAT provides a way to tag publications associated with a set of observations with standard astrophysical concepts, sources, and phenomena. ● SciX (ADS) has promoted the use of the UAT since 2013 and has plans to assign UAT keywords to all astronomy articles. ● SciX Keyword AI Labeler AT SciX (KAILAS) is a developmental AI algorithm that automatically assigns UAT keywords to astronomy papers. ● UAT keywords are used by the AAS journals, Icarus, and PASP well as by IVOA, STScI, and CDS. ● Astronomy Librarians’ involvement ○ refining the UAT through contributions to the taxonomy and concept definitions ○ advocating for users’ needs ○ publicizing the UAT ○ connecting users to the UAT within their organizations or communities ○ aiding users effectively and efficiently utilize this community resource ○ helping build an UAT community throughout the scientific community ○ serving on the WGUAT UAT Resources ● UAT Website - www.astrothesaurus.org ○ UAT Handbook ○ Information Flyer ● SciX Public Library of UAT Pubs ● UAT Working Group ● GitHub Issues - contribute and view changes/updates https://github.com/astrothesaurus/UAT
