Using dcterms:hasPart for skos:ConceptScheme hierarchies ?

Hello all

Sorry for cross-posting, I'd like to attract attention of people from DC,
ISO and LoC. Please follow-up on SKOS list only to reduce noise.

SKOS does not make provision for partitive relationships between instances
of ConceptScheme, such as division of a thesaurus into microthesauri.
ISO 25964 draft introduces the notion of ConceptGroup and possibility of
subgroups. But with no RDF model so far.
Published vocabularies in SKOS such as LCSH use a workaround by declaring
both the general and particular schemes of a concept, such as :

<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh85060646#concept
">
    ...
    <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">Hierarchies</skos:prefLabel>
    ...
    <skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities#topicalTerms
"/>
    <skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities#conceptScheme
"/>
    ...
</rdf:Description>

One has to upload all the LSCH vocabulary (quite large) to figure out that
every other concept declaring <skos:inScheme rdf:resource="
http://id.loc.gov/authorities#topicalTerms"/> has also a declaration
<skos:inScheme rdf:resource="http://id.loc.gov/authorities#conceptScheme"/>
, meaning the extension of the latter includes the extension of the former.

One would certainly prefer to have this declared up front in an intentional
way, avoiding the redundant declarations for each concept.
Seems to me that Dublin Core has provision for such declarations, e.g.,

<http://id.loc.gov/authorities#topicalTerms>   <
http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf>   <
http://id.loc.gov/authorities#conceptScheme>
and/or
<http://id.loc.gov/authorities#conceptScheme>  <
http://purl.org/dc/terms/hasPart <http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf>>  <
http://id.loc.gov/authorities#topicalTerms>

Such declarations could be available under something like
http://id.loc.gov/authorities.rdf.  BTW currently the two concept scheme
URIs redirect to the same HTML page at http://id.loc.gov/authorities, so
there is no formal description of the concept scheme available outside the
whole LCSH files (quite large, as said above.)

To sum it up, questions both to DC and SKOS folks

- Is such a use of dcterms:isPartOf or dcterms:hasPart compatible with the
letter and spirit of both SKOS and DC ?
- If yes, could it be raised to the level of recommended practice endorsed
by both communities?

Thanks for your attention.

Bernard






-- 
Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Vocabulary & Data Engineering
Tel:       +33 (0) 971 488 459
Mail:     bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
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