LIDO Working Group

The LIDO Working Group is a working group of the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC), the documentation-focused international committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). It centralizes information and activities relating to Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO), a format for contributing collection object information for resource discovery. The group sustains LIDO's advancement, exposure, and applicability, and brings together documentation and material for LIDO along with information on CDWA Lite and museumdat, the two XML schemas upon which LIDO is based. The group was formerly known as the Data Harvesting and Interchange Working Group. Its work sits within CIDOC's broader standards programme, which provides the museum community with advice on good practice and developments in museum documentation. CIDOC is one of the 35 International Committees of ICOM that serve as think tanks, specializing in a topic and advising ICOM. LIDO itself is a metadata standard for describing museum objects, designed to support the discovery and interchange of collection information across institutions and systems. The LIDO Working Group acts as the focal point for maintaining and promoting the standard, gathering documentation, and supporting its application in the museum documentation community. As a working group rather than a commercial company, the LIDO Working Group does not sell products or operate in commercial markets. Its "offerings" are standards-related: the LIDO schema and associated documentation, guidance, and community coordination. Its parent body is CIDOC, which operates under the statutes of ICOM.

The LIDO Working Group operates within the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC), the international committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) concerned with museum documentation. CIDOC provides the museum community with advice on good practice and developments in museum documentation and is one of the 35 International Committees of ICOM that serve as think tanks, specializing in a topic and advising ICOM. The LIDO Working Group was formerly known as the Data Harvesting and Interchange Working Group. Under that earlier name it addressed the harvesting and interchange of collection data, work that led to and supported the development of Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO). LIDO is a format for contributing collection object information for resource discovery, and it is based on two XML schemas: CDWA Lite and museumdat. The working group brings together documentation and material for LIDO along with information on those two predecessor schemas. The group's stated purpose is to centralize information and activities currently taking place with LIDO and to sustain LIDO's advancement, exposure, and applicability. This places it within CIDOC's broader standards programme, which also includes other working groups such as the Documentation Standards Working Group (DSWG). The DSWG is itself a merger of two earlier groups, the Data and Terminology Working Group and the Data Model Working Group, and its terminology work has included reviews of terminology resources and publications such as a Terminology control bibliography (1990) and a Directory of Thesauri for Object Names (1994). CIDOC's standards and working-group structure operate under the statutes of ICOM. CIDOC's own statutes define it as the International Documentation Committee, established under Article 17 para 3 of the Statutes of ICOM, with its activities at all times subject to the Statutes of ICOM and to CIDOC's rules made in accordance with Article 28 of the Statutes. During the 26th Extraordinary General Assembly in 2023, ICOM approved changes to its bylaws, part of the governance context in which CIDOC and its working groups, including the LIDO Working Group, operate. As a working group, the LIDO Working Group does not have a commercial history of products, sales, or ownership changes. Its history is one of standards development and community coordination within the museum documentation field, maintaining and promoting LIDO as a format for contributing collection object information for resource discovery.

• The LIDO Working Group is described as formerly the Data Harvesting and Interchange Working Group.

• LIDO is based on two XML schemas, CDWA Lite and museumdat, information on which the working group brings together.

• During the 26th Extraordinary General Assembly in 2023, ICOM approved changes to its bylaws.

A standards-focused working group within CIDOC/ICOM that sustains and promotes the LIDO metadata standard for museum collection object information.

• Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO)

  A format for contributing collection objects information for resource discovery, based on the CDWA Lite and museumdat XML schemas.

1. 1LIDO Working Group - ICOM DOCUMENTATIONicom-documentation.mini.icom.museum
2. 2History of the Documentation Standards working group - ICOM DOCUMENTATIONicom-documentation.mini.icom.museum
3. 3Who we are - ICOM DOCUMENTATIONicom-documentation.mini.icom.museum
4. 4Statutes - ICOM DOCUMENTATIONicom-documentation.mini.icom.museum
5. 5LIDO Working Group - Wikidatawikidata.org