Hi Jeremy,
Many thanks for raising the initial discussion and keeping the thread going.
As someone involved in both the EDL and Integrated Architecture Projects, I
am with Mike that I think the time is approaching when the distributed
service/API model will become a de facto requirement. It is important to
realise, however, that this is likely to raise as many problems as it solves
(albeit some nice, new crunchy ones).
Firstly, much of the web service and OAI-based development of recent years
has been frustratingly one-way. It has been about aggregating data out of
one context into another, and presenting it as a service. What has tended to
happen is that the originating data source gets a pretty raw deal - other
than a periodic spike in bandwidth while being harvested/interrogated, they
tend not to get much back in terms of value.
While it is easy to make a simplistic value proposition (more people coming
to my aggregated service = more eyeballs on your content = more traffic for
you!) there is a real need to provide evidence to justify this assertion -
particularly where the unit cost of participating in these aggregated
services (costs like tidying up your data or tagging it so it can be
identified and harvested) is non-trivial.
In terms of Jeremy's specific example about the Local History Society -
there has to be some kind of exchange of value here. It is not economic for
a museum to assign metadata to the level of granularity required to fit all
these possible requirements. Hence the quality of response to a query of the
form 'give me all the records associated with [REGION] and [SUBJECT]'
entirely depends on the depth and consistency of the available metadata, and
whether it has already been worth someone's while assigning it (unless
someone out there hurries up and invents one of them Semantic Web things).
If we are going to crowdsource this addition of value, then the APIs have to
be facing in as well as out, if you see what I mean...
Although I know well the scepticism which tends to arise whenever we go into
these large-scale national projects, we are getting marginally smarter with
each step - the readiness of the sector to interoperate with content based
services is far better now than it was 3 years ago. I know progress seems
glacial, but to be honest that is just the way it works with technological
development across even small industries.
Turning to John Faithfull's point about the need for basic content to feed
this monster we are building - it's a good point, well made. There is a
tacit assumption that museums, libraries and indeed archives are sitting on
mounds of nicely-structured, richly-contextual narrative information with
lots of lovely copyright-cleared TIF images attached. As we all know, this
isn't necessarily the case.
Let's be honest about this - if you're a politician and you have to choose
between a quick, high-profile, shiny machine you can be photographed in
front of (metaphorically speaking) or a grimy, back-office black hole of
infinite financial need, which are you going to pick? It is not for want of
trying that there is relatively little money for museums to get on with the
day job, but we have to work with the political and economic reality. There
is *never* going to be the magical meeting at which the Secretary of State
says 'what we really need is more Documentation Officers', so we have to do
the best we can from the resources which *are* available. It's actually
quite a coup that the EDL is as 'back office' and integrated as it is!
Nick
Nick Poole
Chief Executive
MDA
www.mda.org.uk
www.collectionslink.org.uk
Tel: 01223 316028
Fax: 01223 364658
MDA (Europe) Ltd: Company Registration No: 1300565
Reg. Office: 22 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 1JP.
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Ottevanger, Jeremy
Sent: 06 February 2008 23:30
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: APIs and EDL
Hi Mike,
Well I knew if there was one person who'd be in favour of this it would
probably be you! I like your rule of thumb. Being pretty inexperienced in
actually programming against web-based APIs myself, much more used to
hacking around the back, this has an appealing simplicity.
I guess the next question for something like EDL is, which of the functions
should be accessible to whom? As content contributors we'd want to get at
all our own stuff (and the user generated content built up around it). We'd
also want, perhaps, to manage this content via API calls, although the
multi-layer approach to content aggregation into the PNDS and Culture24, via
the IAP and on to EDL may preclude this. How about non-contributors? Would
they be able to access the same content (from LAMs and UGC) as those
organisations that had submitted their catalogue records to EDL? For me the
answer is yes, but there could be restrictions. I'd like the local history
society to be able to pull out relevant content in a search engine embedded
on their site, and show that stuff on a map. Should they be able to pull in
the UGC around those items too? I don't know. Maybe the tags, maybe not the
artworks. Does the API complicate rights management?
If the overall architecture is API-centric, probably only parts of those
APIs would be appropriate to open to general users, a bit more to
contributors, and all of it to content aggregators. I guess.
Thanks for the input, Mike, talk soon.
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk
Museum of London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while they
undergo a major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to find out
more.
London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we
see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike
Ellis
Sent: 06 February 2008 13:58
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MCG] APIs and EDL
Hi Jeremy
I know that you and I have talked briefly about this before but I just
wanted to add slightly more public support for this.
The notion of an API in *any* content-rich application should be moving not
only in our sphere of knowledge ("I know what an API is") but *fast* into
our sphere of requirement ("give me an API or I won't play").
Whatever the context, however the application is going to be used (or not),
we should (I'm passionate about this and would actually say *MUST*) be very
firmly pushing our institutions in this direction. Applications - either web
or not - which don't give us easy, programmatic access into our data should
be resisted. The siloing of data - which we're all too familiar with - has
come from lack of standards and proprietary ("no in, no out") systems.
I did a presentation a while back in which I bang on endlessly about this -
see
http://www.slideshare.net/dmje/web2-and-distributed-services-mike-ellis-v2.
If anyone wants me to come and give a similar one, I'd be delighted to do
so...
So yes. EDL should have a feature-rich API. A good rule of thumb for this
functionality is to ask: "how much of what can be done by back-end and
developer built web systems can be done and accessed via the API?" In an
ideal world it'd be 100%. If it's 0 then run away, fast!
I'll be in contact with you off-list to continue the conversation ;-)
Cheers
Mike
Mike Ellis
Solutions Architect
Eduserv
[log in to unmask]
tel: 01225 474300
fax: 01225 474301
www.eduserv.org.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group on behalf of Ottevanger, Jeremy
Sent: Tue 05/02/2008 12:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: APIs and EDL
Dear all,
Some of you will know of the European Digital Library, an EC project that is
currently in a prototyping phase (known as EDLnet
http://www.europeandigitallibrary.eu/edlnet/). It is part of the wider
Digital Libraries Initiative
(http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/wh
at_is_dli/index_en.htm) and shortly after that I get lost in the maze of EC
projects, initiatives, directorates etc. Anyway, its final form is up in the
air, but essentially it is hoped that it will aggregate digital content from
museums, libraries and archives across Europe. Quite what will be held, the
technical architecture, how the content will be accessed and maintained and
many other questions are working their way through the system, but one day
it may offer a partial solution to cross-collection searching, at least for
a subset of European-owned material. Apologies to those who know more about
this subject, I'm almost certain I've misrepresented it!
I got interested in the project when I attended a meeting late last year, at
which the organisers were brainstorming user requirements and ideas for the
interface. I went along with a particular axe to grind, which was the need
for an API. The basic rationale was that EDL will have limited appeal for
users if they have to go to a single portal site to search, whereas it would
serve a lot more people if it was the engine behind many sites scattered
around the web. For organisations that might contribute content to the
central repository, too, it would be a far more attractive proposition if
they knew that they could then access the data themselves, embed EDL
functionality in their sites or mash it up with mediating content, maps etc.
EDL could act as a sophisticated online collections database for a small
museum that could never countenance building its own search engine, much as
one can embed google site search into your own page at present. This would
be good for EDL because it could be quite a strong motive for contributing
content.
Overall I think that an API could actually be much more useful than a
"portal" website.
So to the purpose of this e-mail. An upcoming EDL "users and usability"
meeting, in March, will be looking more closely at the subject of APIs, and
in preparation for this I was hoping to get some thoughts from the MCGers
about:
* whether and why an API would be useful to them, or influence
their decision on whether to contribute content to EDL
* what features might prove useful
* any examples of APIs or of their application that they think
provide a model for what EDL's API could offer or enable
It would be nice to feel I could represent the thoughts of a good portion of
the practitioners in the UK, or at least more than myself alone. Thanks in
advance,
Jeremy
Jeremy Ottevanger
Web Developer, Museum Systems Team
Museum of London Group
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7410 2207
Fax: 020 7600 1058
Email: [log in to unmask] www.museumoflondon.org.uk Museum of
London is changing; our lower galleries will be closed while they undergo a
major new development. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk to find out more.
London's Burning - explore how the Great Fire of London shaped the city we
see today www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning
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For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the
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