LiDO (Linked Data Overheid)

Frequently asked questions

What can LiDO do that an ordinary search engine cannot?

Recognise different citation forms as the same document. LiDO uses software that recognises the notations lawyers use interchangeably in practice: searching for 'Bolkestein Directive' also finds documents that write 'Directive 2006/123/EC', 'Directive (EU) 2006/123' or 'Services Directive'. The same applies to statutory articles ('Article 12 Constitution', 'Art 12 GW', 'Grw art. 12') and to rulings, which can be found via ECLI, the old Dutch LJN number, a journal citation such as NJ 1998, 367, or even the nickname 'Pikmeer II'. Searching on the text of a citation therefore returns every variant, not only the spelling you happened to type.

Which collections are included in the network?

LiDO recognises references in every ruling whose text is published on Rechtspraak.nl, and from there links to: all statutes, treaties and other instruments in the Dutch basic legislation database on wetten.nl; all documents on officielebekendmakingen.nl, with parliamentary papers, Staatsblad, Staatscourant and Tractatenblad from 1995 onwards and the municipal, provincial, water authority and joint arrangement journals in full; Dutch rulings insofar as they have an ECLI, even if they are not on Rechtspraak.nl; rulings of the Court of Justice of the EU and its predecessors; rulings of the European Court of Human Rights; and European treaties, regulations, directives and other secondary legislation. The identifying data for those come from HUDOC and EUR-Lex.

Can the references be followed in both directions?

Not everywhere, and that is a real limitation in source research. LiDO gives the example itself: at present you can find the references made in Dutch court rulings to parliamentary papers, but not yet the references made in parliamentary papers to rulings. The same pattern applies to technical standards: in the consolidated statutory texts on wetten.overheid.nl, LiDO recognises references to standards such as NEN, NEN-EN, ISO and IEC and records them as outgoing relations of the article, but the search box lets you search for the article and not for the name of the standard. An empty result therefore does not necessarily mean there is no connection.

Can I query LiDO programmatically?

Partly. Alongside the graphical interface, LiDO offers web services called through a URL with parameters that return XML. Publicly available are, among others, get-id, which returns the internal LiDO identifier for an external identifier or a Juriconnect reference; get-aantal, which computes the total number of incoming and outgoing links of an information item; and get-aantal-per-informatietype, which breaks those numbers down by document type. LiDO notes itself that the services are not an entirely public facility: part of them requires a username and password, to be requested through the feedback page.

How does LiDO handle abbreviations that could mean two different statutes?

Generously in the search box, strictly in the linked texts — and that difference can mislead you. Search input is not case-sensitive: officially 'Aw' stands for the Dutch Copyright Act and 'AW' for the Civil Servants Act, but any combination of the letters a and w leads to both statutes, after which you choose. When recognising references inside the texts, capitalisation is taken into account. LiDO warns about this with a concrete example: if a judge refers in a ruling to 'Art 12 Aw', that is read as a reference to the Copyright Act, even though the Civil Servants Act may have been meant. A relation LiDO found is therefore a lead that you must check against the text itself.