LIDO provides an XML based schema for these types of information and serves as common ground for sharing metadata.
It enables web portals to integrate information from different organizations (like museums or collections) in a standardized format.
The web portal owner has to write a crosswalk for each external metadata format which is both costly and time-consuming.
This concept has its source in CIDOC CRM and provides an opportunity to gain new insights about the object or persons involved:"This event-centric approach [of CIDOC CRM] makes it possible to map the properties of an object with references to the actors involved, to location, and time more precisely.
Thus, it supports the (automatic) uncovering of correlations between originally scattered information and it contributes to the contextualization of objects.”[7]LIDO also provides the possibility to connect data with authority files.
Its main purpose it to define controlled vocabularies for certain LIDO elements and attributes which are made referenceable through a URI.
It adopts aspects of its predecessor, CDWA, but heavily relies on CIDOC CRM's classes, e.g. E5 Event, E39 Actor, E55 Type.