TOLMOS · UNIVERSITY RESEARCH
From legal text to a traceable decision
Can a relational library reduce the effort of finding education law, reconstructing its context and understanding its limits?
This pilot forms part of Luis Manuel Tolmos’s research into fragmented regulation and legal complexity in education. Its comparative strand addresses copyright, teaching, libraries and metadata reuse.
Academic connection
CopyrightX: Libraries 2026 provides thematic context for comparative cases. The course is affiliated with Harvard’s CopyrightX and includes teaching by MIT Libraries staff. This library is an independent project, with no MIT, Harvard or CopyrightX partnership, accreditation or endorsement.
CopyrightX: Libraries · source and syllabus ↗Research uses
- Trace a question from the use case to the provision, legislation and source.
- Compare exceptions by purpose, beneficiary, territory and conditions without presuming equivalence.
- Reuse an identifiable corpus with edition, provenance and evidenced relationships.
Pilot design and limits
Purposive selection of 11 laws, 58 provisions, three cases and one academic reference; not a representative sample of all education law. Case law, regional legislation and a full-text archive are not yet included. Analyses have not undergone independent legal review.
ELI, CELEX and ECLI are retained only when provided by the source. Provisions use internal identifiers; official identifiers are not fabricated. English descriptive translations are editorial.
Data model
| Entity | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Source and jurisdiction | Provenance, territory and reuse terms. |
| Document and version | Legislation, provision, case or resource; immutable metadata edition and hash. |
| Concept and classification | Topics, settings and audiences; many-to-many relationships. |
| Documented relationship | Source, target, type, evidence, locator and consultation date. |
| Analysis and resource | Interpretation by jurisdiction, limits and portal guidance links. |
JSON includes relationships, bilingual vocabulary and history. CSV contains records. JSON-LD provides a descriptive Schema.org and Dublin Core projection; it does not imply ELI or DCAT-AP certification or official API status.
Download relational SQL schemaUpdates and editorial control
This edition uses documented official-source checks. Administrators can check the BOE API to record new observations; these do not automatically replace records. Periodic synchronisation and EUR-Lex ingestion are not active. Future editions must preserve history and review affected resources before publication.
Planned evaluation
Compare usual search with the library using equivalent tasks: find a provision, identify its version and justify a relationship. Measure time, accuracy, citation traceability and understanding of limits. Use between-group or counterbalanced design to reduce learning effects. Record study decisions before collecting data.
Proposed protocol: no participants or results yet. No data or invitations have been sent to universities.
Explore the library