Re: [dxwg] Improve discovery of datacatalogs by registering well-known suffix 'datacatalog' (#1290)

The [Dutch Digital Heritage Network (Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed)](https://www.netwerkdigitaalerfgoed.nl/en/) is a partnership in the Netherlands that focuses on developing a system of national facilities and services for improving the visibility, usability, and sustainability of digital heritage. The network is open to all institutions and organisations in the digital heritage field. Together we can make the most of our digital heritage and preserve it for future generations.

One of the goals is to get a better view of the available datasets in the digital heritage field. With a better understanding datasets can be re-used and links between data(sets) can be made, Linked Open Data is important in the strategy. The "Register"-project stimulates institutions and organisations in the digital heritage field to publish their dataset descriptions (and datacatalogs) online. We formulate requirements (this is where schema.org/Dataset and DCAT Application Profiles play an important role) and educate the organisations and their IT-suppliers.

To get the datasetdescriptions (and in the long term build a knowledge graph) we have an API which organisation can use to register their datasetdescriptions. The system contains a validator (SHACL) and crawler to get (and frequently update) the datasetdescriptions (which are stored in a public triple store). This is the re-active side of our crawler. To make our crawler more pro-active in finding datasetsdescriptions, we can have our crawler check the sites of Dutch heritage organisations. But instead of spidering a whole website (like Google does), it would be more efficient if the location of the datacatalog on a website has a fixed URI. This is where the .well-known/datacatalog scheme can help. 

I can imagine that in the DCAT specification, a paragraph stimulates the use of .well-known/datacatalog as a means to make datacatalogs more discoverable. This would benefit the publishers of datacatalogs and the automated usage of datacatalogs.

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Received on Thursday, 4 February 2021 10:34:46 UTC