Unified Astronomy Thesaurus Wins Award

The Unified Astronomy Thesaurus (UAT), an open and community-supported lexicon of astronomy concepts, has been recognized this year with the Special Library Association's Physics-Astronomy-Math (PAM) Division Award. The award is granted to an individual or organization that provides a significant contribution to the literature of physics, astronomy, or mathematics, or to honor work that demonstrably improves the exchange of information in one or more of these areas.

Historically, every astronomical publisher, funding agency, and database has used its own set of keywords to classify publications, grant proposals, and observations. The UAT, first developed roughly a decade ago, is a resource designed to unite all astronomers under a single evolving vocabulary that governs the keywords and classifications for research topics in the astronomical sciences. The UAT is stewarded and owned by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and managed by a steering committee of stakeholders from throughout the astronomical community.

In recent years, the UAT has grown into a powerful resource, expanding into a collection of more than 2,000 astronomical concepts and their interrelationships. This new system has already been adopted by key stakeholders, including the AAS, the Astrophysics Data System, the International Virtual Observatory Alliance, and the Space Telescope Science Institute's proposal system for the Hubble Space Telescope.

The 32nd PAM Division Award was formally presented to the UAT team for “their contributions connecting concepts across astronomy and opening new methods of exploring the literature.” The Special Library Association is an international professional society for library and information professionals working in business, government, law, finance, nonprofit, and academic organizations and institutions.