handling dwc:associatedWhatever terms in the RDF guide

[Steve Baskauf]

I had an off-list email exchange with Bob Morris and Paul Morris
yesterday about the dwc:associatedWhatever terms (dwc:associatedMedia,
dwc:associatedOrgansims, etc.). I have summarized the issue here:
https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/AssociatedTerms
Please express an opinion about whether you would prefer option 1, 2, or
3. You can discuss or express an opinion via email response to this
list or as a comment on the wiki page. If I don't get comments or
opinions within several days, I will assume a default of option 1 (do
nothing).

Steve

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[Steve Baskauf]

I have had an additional thought since I wrote this first email. In
Option 3, I suggested minting the single term: dwciri:associatedWith as
a URI-reference value alternative to all of the various
dwc:associatedWhatever terms. I was looking at the Dublin Core terms at
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ and realized that perhaps we
don't need to mint any term at all. The term dcterms:relation is an
existing term that I think would mean the same thing as the putitive
dwciri:associatedWith term. dcterms:relation is already used as a
superclass of other DCMI terms that specify relationships among
resources, such as dcterms:isPartOf . So I think that I would prefer
option 3 using dcterms:relation instead of minting
dwciri:associatedWith. Under this revised option 3, the guide would
just specify that dcterms:relation would be used along with a type
declaration for the object resource as a non-literal value alternative
to the dwc:associatedWhatever terms. Otherwise, the pros and cons of
option 3 would be the same.

Steve

[Éamonn Ó Tuama [GBIF]]

I am in favour of option 3 with a preference for Steve's last suggestion - use of dcterms:relation (based on "relation" being equivalent to "association", and no cons that I can think of).
Éamonn

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[John Wieczorek]

I second the improved option 3.

[Bob Morris]

I'm not sure what I've opined in the past about this, and not sure
what I think now. But when I look at
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-relation I notice
that it is still embroiled in the issues of whether it can take a
string value. (That is the term you are proposing, right Steve?.) The
original option 3 would be unambiguous on this point, so I probably
favor it, even at the cost of minting a new term.

Robert A. Morris

Emeritus Professor of Computer Science
UMASS-Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125-3390


Filtered Push Project
Harvard University Herbaria
Harvard University

email: morri...@gmail.com
web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/
web: http://wiki.filteredpush.org
http://wiki.datakurator.net
http://taxonconceptexplorer.org/
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram

[Steve Baskauf]

My reading of what DCMI says in the note is that dcterms:relation should have a non-literal value, which is the way we were proposing it should be used.  The comment "Recommended best practice is to identify the related resource by means of a string conforming to a formal identification system." is a bit weird but it comes straight from the superproperty dc:relation.  In the context of RDF, the related resource _is_ identified by a string conforming to a formal identification system: an IRI.  The comment doesn't say that the _value_ should be a string.  So I don't see what the problem is with using it in the way that the RDF guide currently recommends. [1].
Steve

[1] https://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfGuideProposalRevised#2.8_Darwin_Core_association_terms

[John Wieczorek]

Seems consistent to me as well.