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Thanks for sharing these examples, Frankie. The exhibition data feed is useful. I can see this having even more benefit in an integrated national collections offering, (for example, because visitors might remember the show but not where it was, and because exhibitions often tour or are collaboratively organised). What would be even more useful is if it could include links to some or all of the collection items, but I'm not sure how easy that would be? I'm interested to know, generally, what are the official policies, or the concerns for senior managers, in making data like this available through API's? Best wishes Bridget McKenzie Flow Associates [log in to unmask] 07890 540178 Roberto Frankie wrote: > Hi all, > > There was lots of talk at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference about > making data feeds of our content available - and indeed this is kind of > the theme of the Museums on the Web conference in Leicester next month > (and has been discussed on this list extensively before). > > Bearing all this in mind, I've decided to put my money time where my > mouth is and produce some experimental API feeds for some Science Museum > data: http://api.sciencemuseum.org.uk/. > > The first couple of feeds were created through necessity: an exhibition > which allows people to 'pledge' to do clean up their flying habits. So > the API methods here are used by the on-gallery kiosks (using Flash) to > retrieve and save data to a web server. > > We've also enabled the beta MediaWiki API on our Object Wiki > (http://objectwiki.sciencemuseum.org.uk/mediawiki/api.php), which has > already been used to generate a Twitter feed: > http://twitter.com/museummemories > > The final API though is based on one of my ideas coming home from the > mw2008 conference (#8 on http://www.frankieroberto.com/weblog/868), > which is to make basic exhibition and gallery information available. So > I've knocked together a quick database of all the Science Museum > exhibitions, past and present, that I could easily find out about. You > can see the raw feed here: http://api.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/ > in XML or here: http://api.sciencemuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/?output=json > in JSON format (which can be easily parsed by Javascript). The > documentation of the format is here: > http://api.sciencemuseum.org.uk/documentation/exhibitions/ > > As a quick demonstration of how you could use this data, I've produced a > Yahoo! Pipes mashup which filters out all the exhibitions and galleries > which are now closed: > http://pipes.yahoo.com/frankieroberto/previoussciencemuseumexhibitions > > I'd welcome any feedback on these feeds, and would love to see other > museums making their exhibition and gallery info available too. > > Have a good weekend! > > Frankie Roberto > Science Museum > > This e-mail and attachments are intended for the named addressee only and are confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately, delete the message from your computer system and destroy any copies. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not reflect the views of the National Museum of Science & Industry. This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System. > > ************************************************** > For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk > ************************************************** > > > > ************************************************** For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk **************************************************