Best practice for a loosely-structured catalog?

Catalogueers:

I've been doing some investigations of some local repositories and catalogues, and have uncovered that in many cases 'datasets' are 'just a bag of files'. There is no distinction made between part/whole, distribution (representation), and other kinds of relationship (e.g. documentation, schema, supporting documents). So while the precision we are aiming for in DCAT is clearly valuable in terms of semantics, it is difficult to implement on these legacy systems. Mostly I see people using the Dataset-distribution-> relationship for everything ... which is clearly incorrect in many cases. But I doubt if we are unusual in this.

I'm thinking about how to advise on this, while not actually breaking DCAT.

If we made dcat:distribution a sub-property of dct:relation

dcat:distribution rdfs:subPropertyOf dct:relation .

then I think we can have a reasonable recommendation to the simple repositories.
We could tell repositories that use the 'just a bag of files' approach to say

               :Dataset987 a dcat:Dataset ;
                              dct:relation <file1> , <file2> , <file3> , <file4> , <file5> , <file6> , <file7> ... .

which would not be inconsistent with a later reclassification to

               :Dataset987 a dcat:Dataset ;
                              dct:hasPart <file1> , <file2> ;
                              dcat:distribution <file3> , <file4> ;
                              dct:conformsTo <file5> ;
                              dct:requires <file6> ;
dct:references <file7> .

If this is not all mad, I will add a new use-case - something like 'Mapping from simple repository model' - as justification, and propose this tiny enhancement.

Simon

Simon J D Cox
Research Scientist - Environmental Informatics
Team Leader - Environmental Information Infrastructure
CSIRO Land and Water<http://www.csiro.au/Research/LWF>

E simon.cox@csiro.au<mailto:simon.cox@csiro.au> T +61 3 9545 2365 M +61 403 302 672
   Mail: Private Bag 10, Clayton South, Vic 3169
   Visit: Central Reception, Research Way, Clayton, Vic 3168
   Deliver: Gate 3, Normanby Road, Clayton, Vic 3168
people.csiro.au/Simon-Cox<http://people.csiro.au/Simon-Cox>
orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-3420<http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3884-3420>
researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Cox3<https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simon_Cox3>
github.com/dr-shorthair<https://github.com/dr-shorthair>
lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov/agents/Simon%20Cox<http://lov.okfn.org/dataset/lov/agents/Simon%20Cox>
Twitter @dr_shorthair<https://twitter.com/dr_shorthair>
Skype dr_shorthair<skype:dr_shorthair>
https://xkcd.com/1810/

PLEASE NOTE
The information contained in this email may be confidential or privileged. Any unauthorised use or disclosure is prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete it immediately and notify the sender by return email. Thank you. To the extent permitted by law, CSIRO does not represent, warrant and/or guarantee that the integrity of this communication has been maintained or that the communication is free of errors, virus, interception or interference.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.