Museum, gallery, library, archive, archaeology and cultural heritage (GLAM++) APIs, linked and open data services

 

Please add APIs and other data sets you're aware of, ideally with a comment on what's useful or not about how they've been implemented or documented.  If you know of or have written libraries for use with these APIs, then please add them to help other people get started.  It's fine to add your own GLAM API - in fact, it's encouraged!

 

Information about schemas/data structures used by other projects is also useful, even if they don't provide an API.  If there's a public-facing collections online site related to the museum API, feel free to include it.  It's also helpful if you can give a rough estimate of the number of records and supported access methods.

 

Thinking of having a hack day to road-test your API?  Check out hackdaymanifesto.com for lots of useful tips.

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SMK (Statens Museum for Kunst), The National Gallery of Denmark (art history, open data)

SMK site page about their Free download of art works

Download all the 159 images here. Please notice, that the file is 5 GB.

 

Case study: Highlights from SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark

A pilot with digital images of 159 collection highlights, and 100 educational videos on YouTube under the CC BY license.  The 159 images of highlights from SMK's collections are released for free download in the highest available resolution that the museum currently has at its disposal. The image files range from approximately 10 MB up to 440 MB.

 

Hat tip: @MSanderhoff.

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State Records NSW API (archives, API)

Documentation: http://api.records.nsw.gov.au/usage

 

Hat tip: @abigailbelfrage, @CassPF, @richardlehane.

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Meketre (Egyptology, linked data)

"reliefs and paintings of Middle Kingdom tombs of Ancient Egypt. The project targets two- dimensional art of the Middle Kingdom (11th to 13th Dynasty, ca. 2040 - 1640 B.C.) and one of its main aims is to map and elaborate the development of the scenes and their content in comparison to the Old Kingdom."

http://www.meketre.org/repository/ 

http://meketre.org/index.php?page=about: "Multimedia content within the MEKETREpository is organized by means of one main taxonomy (in English), which embraces the various themes depicted by the reliefs and paintings in a hierarchical fashion and multiple additional concept schemes (ontologies / controlled vocabularies) that further describe the content. The concept schemes that describe other aspects of the multimedia content (not the depicted persons and things but for example colours, location, age, etc.) are constantly developed in the course of the project, using collaborative ontology building methods. The applied concept schemes are technically represented using standardized web based knowledge organization systems (KOS), in particular the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
The implementation of the MEKETREpository software solution utilizes industry-standard technology to ensure both reliability and maintainability. Since the project is expected to develop beyond the three-year limit, it is important to build on a well-proven foundation of software components and a clean, well documented implementation. Therefore we decided to organize the MEKETREpository in a 3-tier style which is very common for many enterprise software solutions.
As stated above, the main focus lies in providing an easy-to-use interface to the collected data. For the user browsing the MEKETREpository, an up-to-date webbrowser (e.g. Firefox 3.0, Internet Explorer 7.0 or Safari 4.0 and, of course all versions above) is sufficient. If the user needs to edit and update information in the repository, he needs to enable Javascript in the browser."

 

Hat tip: @bhaslhofer.

 

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Trove

Trove offers over 289,384,834 Australian and online resources including books, images, historic newspapers, maps, music, archives and more.

 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/api 

The Trove API provides programmatic access to the metadata and some full text in Trove.

You can use the API to search across Trove’s books, images, maps, music, sound, video, archives, journal articles, newspaper articles and lists created by other users (archived websites, people and organisations may be added at a later date) and retrieve metadata records for the items you find. You can also download the full text for most digitised newspaper articles.

 

Response encoding: XML, JSON

Base URL: http://api.trove.nla.gov.au

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Cooper Hewitt

http://www.cooperhewitt.org/collections/data

 

Also available on GitHub, with tombstone data released under a CC0 licence.

http://labs.cooperhewitt.org/2012/releasing-collection-github/

 

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Amsterdam Museum Metadata API Collection

[Google-translated from http://www.appsforamsterdam.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/AmsterdamMuseum.txt]

http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx

images: http://ahm.adlibsoft.com/ahmimages/

Replace ..\..\dat\collectie\images\ in the object records with the above (and replace slashes)  

 

Adlib API description: http://api.adlibsoft.com/site/  

 

The database of the museum collection called Amcollect. An example search: 

http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx?database=AMcollect&search=creator=Helst*&xmltype=grouped

AMlibrary library database:

http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx?database=AMlibrary&search=title=Helst*&xmltype=grouped

AMperson:

http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx?database=AMperson&search=name=Helst*&xmltype=grouped

Thesaurus AMterms:

http://amdata.adlibsoft.com/wwwopac.ashx?database=AMterms&search=term=Herengracht*&xmltype=grouped

 

The linked open data from the Amterdam Museum: http://ckan.net/package/amsterdam-museum-as-edm-lod

 

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Rijksmuseum API

www.rijksmuseum.nl/api 

 

The Rijksmuseum Application Programming Interface (API) is a Rijksmuseum service for partners and application developers. Register for an API key for access to structural metadata and images of the Rijksmuseum’s collection, which can then be used to develop applications or simply to enrich your collection.

 

Once you register for an API key, you will be emailed a code with which you can access data sets. You will be granted access to the Rijksmuseum’s general collection, consisting of over 100,000 objects, The Night Watch included! Digital images are available for all objects. The images are 330 dpi JPEg images (approx 3 to 5 mb, produced in a colourmanaged enviroment).

 

Our datasets are made available as an XML web service based on the OAI/PMH protocol. Each object is included in the XML as a  record. The record field definitions are based on the Dublin Core field definitions: www.dublincore.org. An example of one of our objects: The Nightwatch (SK-C-5).

 

A complete description of our XML records is available in Dutch at: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/api/uitleg.

 

For information or comments please contact: collectieinfo@rijksmuseum.nl

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Government Art Collection (crawled version of website on kasabi)

http://kasabi.com/dataset/government-art-collection

'This dataset is a re-publication of the metadata contained in the Government Art Collection website. The data was obtained by crawling the website to collection information about all of the works, artists and subjects.

The dataset contains over 10,000 art works from more than 3,000 artists. The art works depict nearly 2,000 places and over a 1,000 different people. The majority of the people mentioned in the paintings (over 700) have been linked to their description in Dbpedia. Over time the dataset will be updated to include links to other datasets.

While this dataset and the original website are available for re-use under the Open Government License, the images on the site have their own copyright terms. Refer to the GAC website for guidance on licensing of images. The images themselves are not copied into this dataset, but links have been made to the source images to facilitate legal re-use. Copyright statements have been preserved where available, so these can be queried from the dataset.'

 

Includes SPARQL endpoint, sample queries, search, lookup, reconciliation, augmentation and attribution links.

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National Library of France/Bibliothèque nationale de France

http://data.bnf.fr/

'les informations issues de ses différents catalogues, ainsi que de sa bibliothèque numérique Gallica' or content from various catalogues and Gallica, their digital library.

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English Heritage Places

http://kasabi.com/dataset/english-heritage

This dataset contains metadata for about 400,000 nationally important places as recorded by English Heritage, the UK Government's statutory adviser on the historic environment.

This dataset covers features located in England and is divided into various types:

Listed Buildings – buildings of special architectural or historic interest
Scheduled Monuments – nationally important sites and monuments from all periods of history
Registered Parks & Gardens – landscapes and naturally occuring features of national importance
Historic Battlefields – sites of important battles in English history
Protected Wreck Sites – sites of shipwrecks of national importance

 

Includes SPARQL endpoint, sample queries, search, lookup, reconciliation, augmentation and attribution links.

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National Maritime Museum

http://collections.nmm.ac.uk/api.html

API structure
The search interface is powered by SOLR (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/), an open source enterprise search platform developed by the Apache foundation.

The system is currently under development and therefore the schema and indexes described in this document are subject to change.

Base URL
The base URL for SOLR searching is http://collections.nmm.ac.uk/solr

 

Sample queries
Find objects made in 1914 and return the description and collection:
http://collections.nmm.ac.uk/solr/?q=type:object AND dateMade:1914&fl=description,collection

Find all records with ‘Nelson’ in the title, return the title and description and provide a facet count of each record type:
http://collections.nmm.ac.uk/solr/?q=name:Nelson&facet=on&facet.field=type&fl=name, description

 

http://collections.nmm.ac.uk/conditions

Extract: "Collection images must always credit ‘National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London’ and link to the original collection record on the NMM collections website. Some collection images have a more restricted licence than CC BY-NC-SA, which you must comply with. Please see our full API documentation for advice on how to exclude such images"

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British Museum Semantic Web Collection Online

http://collection.britishmuseum.org/

 

"...Linked Data and SPARQL service. It provides access to the same collection data available through the Museum’s web presented Collection Online, but in a computer readable format. The use of the W3C open data standard, RDF, allows the Museum’s collection data to join and relate to a growing body of linked data published by other organisations around the world interested in promoting accessibility and collaboration.

 

The data has also been organised using the CIDOC-CRM (Conceptual Reference Model) crucial for harmonising with other cultural heritage data. The current version is beta and development work continues to improve the service. We hope that the service will be used by the community to develop friendly web applications that are freely available to the community."

 

See also https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/british_museum_object_thesaurus/ - an attempt to automatically map the British Museum Object Thesaurus published on the Collections Link website (http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/assets/thesaurus/) to the relevant URIs from the British Museum Linked Data, and also to terms/URIs on the Portable Antiquities website (http://finds.org.uk/database/terminology/objects)

 

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The National Gallery (UK)

 

National Gallery API

http://research.ng-london.org.uk/wiki/index.php/National_Gallery_API

'A SPARQL end-point to an rdf description of the National Gallery Collection is being developed. The data will be stored in a triple store from Garlic called 4Store and will be published in the form of URIs with data in human readable and machine readable form. ... The data will potentially be mapped to more than one schema/ontology, though we will be specifically developing a mapping to the CIDOC CRM.'

 

RDF at the National Gallery

http://rdf.ng-london.org.uk/scientific/rdf.php

'These pages represent RDF descriptions of National Gallery related information, some linked to the CIDOC CRM and other external information sources.'

 

Raphael API

The Raphael Research Resource began to examine how complex conservation, scientific and art historical research could be combined in a flexible digital form. Exploring the presentation of interrelated high resolution images and text, along with how the data could be stored in relation to an event driven ontology in the form of RDF triples. In addition to the main user interface the data stored within the system is now also accessible in the the form of open linkable data combined with a SPARQL end-point.

 

Web-page: http://rdf.ng-london.org.uk/raphael.

Further detail relating to the worked examples along with the code used to build then can be seen at: http://rdf.ng-london.org.uk/workshops/interface2011/

 

 

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Science Museum, National Railway Museum, Media Museum (NMSI) object records as CSV

http://api.sciencemuseum.org.uk/documentation/collections/

 

We’ve published three data sets:

• 218,822 object records
• 40,596 media records
• 173 event records

 

See also NMSI Collections list and NMSI term lists and the NMSI museum developers blog for updates on things people have made.

 

Things other people have done:

Ant Beck (@AntArch) at Culture Hack Day North, November 2011: We have cleaned up the National Railway data. Please use! Data: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/393477/chn11KEEP/NMSI_Object_Cleaned_With_Grouping.txt Processing http://dl.dropbox.com/u/393477/chn11KEEP/NMSI_Processing.docx.

 

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Europeana API

http://version1.europeana.eu/web/api

http://europeanalabs.eu/wiki/EuropeanaOpenSearchAPI

Europeana API services are web services allowing search and display of Europeana collections in your website and applications. Currently, Europeana API services are only available to Europeana network partners.

 

You can choose between two services depending on your needs, website concept and available technical resources:

Europeana Search API (Application Programming Interface) allows you to build applications of your own: from a customised view of the Europeana content on your websites (for instance, how much information to be shown, where, and in what format) to creative mash-ups and new services such as an iPhone app. The API is based on the Open Search standard, and developers will find it easy to work with.

 

Europeana Search Widget is a ready-made search box suitable for organisations who want to enable search in Europeana collections with the least possible effort. The widget is easily styled, configured and quickly embedded by simply copying and pasting an HTML-snippet into your website.

 

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CultureGrid

http://www.culturegrid.org.uk/use/

Documentation:

Code libraries, snippets: some PHP that handles JSON from the CultureGrid API at https://github.com/mialondon/mmg-import/blob/master/mmg_import_functions.php 

 

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Open API 

Open API is a Ruby-based program that allows users to create a public API for any MySQL database, including digital collections databases. 

 

Visit our GitHub page (http://github.com/OpenExhibits/OpenAPI) to download the latest build or learn more about Open API on our blog (http://openexhibits.org/blog/api-generator-collection-database.html). 

 

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Powerhouse API

http://api.powerhousemuseum.com/

Documentation: http://api.powerhousemuseum.com/api/v1/documentation/

Code libraries, snippets: some PHP that handles XML from the Powerhouse Museum API at https://github.com/mialondon/mmg-import/blob/master/mmg_import_functions.php

 

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Open Context API

Open Context has some museum content, as well as data from a variety of field-based (mainly archaeological) projects. RESTful web services for Open Context are described here:

 

http://opencontext.org/about/services

 

Essentially, query results are available in paged Atom(+GeoRSS) feeds, KML, and JSON formats. Open Context also makes summaries of query results (bascially facets) availble in these formats.

 

Query parameters include

• GeoSpatial (Lat / Lon bounding box)
• Context (Named locations, archaeological contexts)
• Date Ranges (Start and end dates)
• Project / Collection name
• Type / category of item (site, small finds, sculpture, coins, etc.)
• Related People
• Descriptive properties (including numeric range searches)
• Linked Data URIs: Currently Open Context supports queries over URIs to geographic places defined by Pleiades and to biological taxa defined by the Encyclopedia of Life. A description of how to query over URIs and a few examples can be found at: http://opencontext.org/about/services#query-rel

 

A demonstration of the use of the Open Context API is at:

http://bade.psr.edu/content/tell-en-nasbeh-database (Bade Museum website)

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Pleiades

http://pleiades.stoa.org/

'A community-built gazetteer and graph of ancient places...

Pleiades is a historical gazetteer and more. It associates names and locations in time and provides structured information about the quality and provenance of these entities. There is also a graph in Pleiades: names and locations are collected within places and these collections are associated with other geographically connected places. Pleiades also serves as a vocabulary for talking about the geography of the ancient world within Linked Data sets and is referenced by research projects such as Google Ancient Places and PELAGIOS.

 

CSV, KML and RDF datasets can be downloaded from http://pleiades.stoa.org/downloads

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Pelagios

https://github.com/pelagios/pelagios-graph-explorer/wiki/API-Overview 

'All Graph Explorer functionality is exposed via an HTTP API. It's a read-only API, so GET requests are the only ones which have any effect. The result format is JSON.

For testing purposes, feel free to play with the API of our development server, available under the http://api-pelagios.apigee.com/graph-explorer base URI.

The three resource types the Graph Explorer is dealing with are Datasets, Places and GeoAnnotations.'

 

Find out more about the project at http://pelagios-project.blogspot.com. 'PELAGIOS stands for 'Pelagios: Enable Linked Ancient Geodata In Open Systems' - its aim is to help introduce Linked Open Data goodness into online resources that refer to places in the Ancient World.'

 

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Open Images - Newsreel collection

 

Open Images (www.openimages.eu) is an open media platform that offers online access to audiovisual archive material from various sources to stimulate -creative- reuse. Footage from audiovisual collections can be downloaded and remixed into new works. Users also have the opportunity to add their own material to the Open Images and thus expand the collection. Open Images provides an API (http://www.openimages.eu/api), making it easy for third parties to develop mashups.

 

The platform currently (April 2011) offers access to over 1.500 items from various sources, including a considerable number of newsreels from the collection of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. This amount will grow substantially over the coming years as new items will be uploaded continuously, and as new partners join the initiative.

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Science Museum 'Cosmic Collections' API

A subset of our data, produced as a beta API for our mashup competition.

 

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Brooklyn Museum API

"A set of services that you can use to display Brooklyn Museum collection images and data in your own applications."

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/api/

Methods

• collection.search
• collection.getItem
• collection.getImages

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/api/

Parameters

The methods provided by the API take a range of parameters specific to their individual functions, but all methods rely on these three principal parameters:

method (Required)

Specifies what method to perform (e.g., "collection.search", "collection.getItem")

api_key (Required)

Your personal API Key.

format (Optional)

The response format. Valid formats are xml, json, html. Default xml.

 

A write up here: Hack the Brooklyn Museum:

 

"The API is for non-commercial use with a limit of 3000 API calls a day. Naturally the museum must be respectful of artist copyrights, and requires proper attribution for any display of results. The API also permits only session-based caching with no retention of copies, and the images returned are no greater than 500 pixels in width or height, with many that may be smaller.

The API has a simple REST format with three methods - search, getitem (given the id returned from a search), and getimages for a particular item. The search can be filtered by date, keyword, and whether or not there are images present."

 

[And I just saw that they'd linked here at the end - cool!]

 

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Museum of London API

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museumoflondon/food/rest.aspx

A REST interface to the following data sources:

• publications from the Archaeology Service
• events at the Museum of London, Museum in Docklands, and London Archaeological Archive and Resource Centre
• a converter from OSGB grid references to latitude/longitude

Base URL is: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MuseumofLondon/food/rest.aspx?source=events

Output formats: plain XML; RSS2; and RSS2 with xCal, DC and geo extensions as used by Upcoming.

Set the output format by adding:  mode={rss2 or xCal or xml}. Leaving it out returns the plain XML. (?KML output also possible? Hooks in code for plain text and JSON renderings of the output (not implemented?) )

 

 

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Celtic Coin Index API

http://www.finds.org.uk/CCI/blog/accessing-the-api/

The Celtic Coin Index is the online incarnation of the Celtic Coin collection at the Institute of Archaeology at Oxford University. The collection began in 1960 and contains photographs and information about coins held in Britain's museums. Coins are still being found and added to the collection.

The API is RESTful and returns responses in JSON, XML, geoRSS, KML, RSS, and CSV.

 

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Powerhouse Museum Collection Search (RSS/Opensearch available)

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/menu.php

Image search option also available.

Good example of RESTful query construction and Opensearch/result URI generation.

 

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Digital NZ API

http://www.digitalnz.org/developer

"The metadata available through DigitalNZ comes from content providers across the New Zealand cultural and heritage, broadcasting, education, and government sectors; as well as local community sources and individuals. Geospatial and commercial content is coming soon."

 

The custom search records method is perhaps a little unusual. DigitalNZ has a visual search builder tool that allows users to construct complex search queries. This method provides access to that refined dataset.

 

• search records API: http://api.digitalnz.org/records/[version].[response_format]/?[request-parameters]
• custom search records API: http://api.digitalnz.org/custom_searches/[version]/[custom_search_title].[response_format]/?[request_parameters]
• get metadata API: http://api.digitalnz.org/records/[version]/[record_id].[response_format]/?[request-parameters]

• get content partners API: http://api.digitalnz.org/content_partners/[version].[response_format]/?[request-parameters]

 

Response formats: xml, json, rss. Interesting selection of metadata returns. Minimum metadata response elements include:

• dc:title - the title of the item, or a brief description if no title exists.
• dnz:category - the high-level DigitalNZ category(s) that the item belongs to.
• dnz:content_partner - the organisation who provided the item
• dnz:landing_url - the preferred URL for linking to the item.
• dnz:thumbnail_url - the URL of a thumbnail of the item (required for Images, optional for other categories).

 

There's a good post on how to get started with the API, including sample PHP code, here: http://digitalnz.org/blog/news/article-building-a-website-on-the-digitalnz-api.

 

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Victoria and Albert Museum API

http://www.vam.ac.uk/api  or Victoria and Albert Museum API Docs

We're currently working on a RESTful JSON API for our collections database. It is intended to support our own web apps and widgets first and foremost but also be attractive to third-party developers. I have posted the documentation so that you can see how we've structured things.

 

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Reciprocal Research Network API

http://www.rrnpilot.org/api

The RRN API is currently providing programmatic access to Northwest Coast items from 8 Institutions (Brooklyn Museum, McCord Museum, MOA at UBC, NMNH, Pitt Rivers Museum, Sto:lo Research and Resource Management Centre, The Burke at UW, The MAA at Cambridge). We provide a very simple API where any item or list of items can be represented as XML or JSON by appending '.xml' or '.json' to the end of the URI. We'd be open to expanding the scope of the API should there be any interest.

 

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Transport Archive data structures

"The Metadata elements used in the project are divided into three categories: Content, Intellectual Property and Instantiation."  These pages appear to date from about 2003 - no time at all in museum years, a few centuries in internet years.

 

Content Data Structure

ELEMENT	QUALIFIERS	DUBLIN CORE EQUIVALENT
REFNUM	None	None
QUICK KEYWORD	None	None
TITLE	Title Alternative	DC.TITLE
THEME	Technology, Environment, Community, Economy	None
DESCRIPTION	None	DC.DESCRIPTION
SUBJECT	Subject Detail	DC.SUBJECT
TYPE	Detail Qualifier	NONE
SOURCE	None	DC.SOURCE
RELATION	Based on Cartoon for Copy after Copy of Derived from Document for Document of Facimile of Relation Format Larger context for Larger entity Model for Part of Plan for Prototype for Referenced by References Sketch for Source for Study for Version of	DC.RELATION
COVERAGE	ISO 3166 Location Creation site location Current repository location Current site location Discovery site location Former repository location Former site Period point Spatial Temporal W3CDTF	DC.COVERAGE
IDENTIFIER	None	DC.IDENTIFIER
CREATOR	Attribution Corporate name Personal name Role	DC.CREATOR DC.AUTHOR
PUBLISHER	None	DC:PUBLISHER
CONTRIBUTOR	None	DC:CONTRIBUTOR

 

Intellectual Property Data Structure

ELEMENT	QUALIFIERS	DUBLIN CORE EQUIVALENT
RIGHTS	None	DC: RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
DATE	Alteration Beginning Completion Creation Design Restoration	DC: DATE
FORMAT	Dimension D Dimension W Dimension H Format Image Format Original Material Resolution Support	DC: FORMAT
LANGUAGE	None	DC: LANGUAGE

 

Technical Metadata

DATA	DESCRIPTION
CAPTURE_DEVICE	Equipment used
CAPTURE_DETAILS	Methodology used - i.e. batch scanning
CHANGE_HISTORY	Record of changes made to Master and Web Delivery files
COMPRESSION	Level or type of compression used, if any
RESOLUTION	PPI or number of pixels on each side
COLOUR	Colour depth ofthe image, i.e. 24 bit
COLOUR_MANAGEMENT	Details of embedded colour profiles

 

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Museum Victoria History and Technology Collections API

The API root uri is located at http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/api/v1/

 

Currently the only type of requests supported are those made via REST, and there are two response formats currently supported, XML and JSON.

 

http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/help/api

Like the V&A, we're using the API for our own purposes, but would love to see what other folks might make with our "stuff".

 

Api Documentation

Overview | Requests | Responses | Image URLs

 

Api Methods

Items

• items/getinfo
• items/getinfomultiple
• items/search

Themes

• themes/getinfo
• themes/getitems

Tags

• tags/getitems

Locations

• locations/getitems

 

 

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Indianapolis Museum of Art OpenSearch

Artworks on http://www.imamuseum.org are first class content, so they come up as search results in the site the same way a page would. We have exposed the entire site, including collections, through OpenSearch using the Drupal module, http://drupal.org/project/opensearch. As of the 6.x-1.3 version, there were a few bugs that had to be fixed by hand. The OpenSearch endpoint is declared in the HTML headers throughout the site. Here is the primary endpoint: http://www.imamuseum.org/opensearch/ima.

 

Description Schema for IMA OpenSearch

http://www.imamuseum.org/opensearch/ima/{searchTerms}?page={startPage?}&filters={apachesolr:filters?} 

 

The apachesolr:filters declaration was a custom addition, and relies on the Drupal module's filtering ability.

 

Example Searches:

• Site wide search for "miller"
• http://www.imamuseum.org/opensearch/ima/miller
• Second page of results for "miller"
• http://www.imamuseum.org/opensearch/ima/miller?page=2
• Artwork specific search for "miller"
• http://www.imamuseum.org/opensearch/ima/miller?filters=type:mercury_artwork
• Blog specific search for "miller"
• http://www.imamuseum.org/search/ima/miller?filters=type:blog  

 

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American Numismatic Society Collection Database (MANTIS) APIs

The American Numismatic Society's collection of nearly 600,000 objects is accessible through a Solr-based API that allows for querying the collection with the Lucene search syntax and responds in Atom XML.  The Atom feed contains references to the URI for the object as an HTML representation and also alternate links to the XML source of the object as well as RDF, KML, and Atom representations.  The RDF is rather rudimentary and will be improved over time.  A similar Solr-to-KML API exists.

 

Atom: http://numismatics.org/search/feed/?q=*:*
Object KML: http://numismatics.org/search/query.kml?q=*:*
Mint KML: http://numismatics.org/search/mints.kml?q=*:*

 

The functionality and Solr fields are discussed further in the Numishare (the open-source framework for managing and publishing coin collections) blog post: http://numishare.blogspot.com/2011/04/world-of-numismatic-data-at-your.html

 

Examples

http://numismatics.org/search/feed/?q=department_facet:"Islamic" AND weight_sint:[4 TO 5] - All Islamic coins that weigh between 4 and 5 grams

http://numismatics.org/search/feed/?q=type_text:temple AND imagesavailable:true AND department_facet:"Greek" - Greek coins depicting temples that have been photographed

 

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Portable Antiquities

"The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a partnership project which records archaeological objects found by the public in order to advance our understanding of the past."

"PAS is run by the British Museum ... The data gathered by the Scheme is published on an online database (www.finds.org.uk)."

 

Search results from the PAS database can be accessed as xml, json, kml, atom and rss by the addition of '/format/{format}' to the end of any result set URL 

Records from the PAS database can be accessed as xml, json and csv by the addition of '/format/{format}' to the end of a record URL

Thesaurus terms from the PAS database can be accessed as xml and json by the addition if '/format/{format}' to the end of the URL

 

In the case of search results and thesaurus terms the results are accessed in pages of 30 results. The sets can be paged through by appending /page/{number} at the end of the URL (before or after the '/format/{format}')

 

Examples

Search results: http://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/objecttype/ADZE/format/xml

Record: http://finds.org.uk/database/artefacts/record/id/464434/format/xml 

Thesaurus term: http://finds.org.uk/database/terminology/objects/format/xml

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Black Country History

http://blackcountryhistory.org/about/

Black Country History is a searchable website which allows users to find information about documents, maps, photographs, art works, objects and more held by archives and museums services within the Black Country.

The eight partners involved in this website are:

• Dudley Archives and Local History Service
• Dudley Museums Service
• Sandwell Community History and Archives Service
• Sandwell Museums Service
• Walsall Local History Centre
• Walsall Museums Service
• Wolverhampton Archives and Local Studies
• Wolverhampton Arts and Museums Service

 

http://blackcountryhistory.org/data/

The API is based upon OpenSearch, and by default takes a Lucene style query syntax.  The API is available via a rate limiting proxy, and we don’t issue usage keys: by using the API you agree to having your use of it monitored.  API search requests are limited to 100 requests per hour.  The data made available through the API is licenced as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales, and you are asked to provide a credit and link back to Black Country History in your application or mashup.

 

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Western Australian Museum Sandbox

http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/sandbox/

The API uses REST methods, and can be queried via JSON and XML.

 

Western Australian Shipwrecks

http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/wrecks-xml - this will dynamically generate an XML file for download - this contains only Shipwrecks information (no artefact data) - roughly 1500 wrecks.

 

Western Australian Maritime Archaeology Artefacts - Complete API

Full API - http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/rest/node/

This contains all Maritime Archaeology data, including numismatics, artefacts and wrecks (roughly 47,200 items).

 

If you'd like to be involved in the beta development of the process - be one of the first to get your hands on our API and do something interesting with it we'd love to hear from you.  Send us an email at: onlineservices [at] museum [dot] wa [dot] gov [dot] au