LIDO is an XML harvesting schema. The schema is intended for delivering metadata, for use in a variety of online services, from an organization’s online collections database to portals of aggregated resources, as well as exposing, sharing and connecting data on the web. It is not intended to be used as a basis for a collection management system or to support loan and acquisition activities. 

The strength of LIDO lies in its ability to support the full range of descriptive information about museum objects. It can be used for all kinds of object, e.g. art, architecture, cultural history, history of technology, and natural history.

LIDO supports multilingual portal environments. It does this by having a language attribute that can be associated with each element, or more generally, with the group of descriptive elements for fully multilingual resources.

LIDO name and logo courtesy Rob Lancefield.