Morning.

We've (me, Seb C, Mia, Frankie, bunch of other useful people..) done some work on "how to go about justifying API's in cultural institutions" in a wiki I set up a while back. We're in a position right now where the sector KNOWS it's a good idea, we can all see the amazing stuff going on in the ~real~ world with mashups, feeds and stuff, but are still finding it difficult to take this to budget holders, managers and strategists. The idea behind the wiki is to tease out a non-technical language for justifying API's and find a way of embedding the culture of the API into everything that we do.

Nick's point below about internal use of API's is a really good one, and a good way of beginning to justify these approaches to budget holders. Imagining lifelike scenarios: wanting to provide an enhanced Flash version of your collections website on a kiosk in the museum, for example - gives two fairly clear budgetary paths. One: you spend £80k on re-developing a completely new view into your CM system, duplicating effort, data and pain, or two - you spend £10k on a Flash front-end which talks to the same data-set backend. It's a no-brainer. Ditto for mobile versions, accessible versions, AIR versions, desktop clients, etc etc etc. Doing deals with sponsors and travelling exhibitions becomes trivial. 

Getting suppliers to buy in to this is also crucial. If every specification being sent from a museum started having a section that said "MUST have a full-featured and documented RESTful API" then pretty soon suppliers of software would get the message...

My only word of caution is that we (the sector) doesn't think too hard about this. I know what we're like - we could easily find ourselves in 10 years time still arguing the toss over what API standard to use. Let's *just do it* as per Jeremy, Seb and others, and see what happens from there on up. Once we've made the decision that our data is better *out there* (I think / hope we've reached that decision point and moved on...) then we should start making it happen, asap.

Cheers

Mike 

>>>>>>>>


-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Poole
Sent: 19 August 2008 11:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Uses of APIs for cultural organisations?

Hi Tristan,

I think one of the things about APIs which is often overlooked is the potential for them to drive benefit back into the organisation - particularly in terms of enriching documentation and facilitating Collections Management.

Once we have a critical mass of cultural organisations openly publishing their data online, there is scope for some really interesting collective/aggregated applications, some of which currently require quite a lot of laborious manual intervention.

Examples would include automating elements of the loans process, enriching your documentation (and reducing the manual intervention in data-production) through co-referencing with other published data sources, or promoting consistency through web-services approaches to classification.

It's always important, too, to recognise that a key audience for a museum's digital content tends to be the organisation itself. While a Collections Management System can sometimes become localised within a documentation team, API-based publishing opens up the potential for data to be repurposed by other teams across the museum, such as education, front-of-house or retail and product development.

We find that many cultural organisations, particularly the larger ones, are running a number of Collections systems in parallel. On one level, the simple discipline of preparing your dataset for distribution via a structured API helps to improve its quality and consistency. On another, API-based approaches have the potential to normalise different systems within the organisation and provide an aggregated infrastructure for collections content.

Ultimately, I would hope that museum systems will evolve to include API-based distribution 'out of the box' to better enable this kind of organisational data-sharing and integration.

All best,

Nick


-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Ellis
Sent: 19 August 2008 11:24
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Uses of APIs for cultural organisations?

Hi Tristan

See http://mashedmuseum.org.uk where I've tried to compile some stuff around the notion of an "open/api'd" museum. There's a Google Group there that might be of use, plus I'll email you off-list with details about another (currently private) wiki I've been working on which you might be interested in.

Cheers

Mike


Mike Ellis
Professional Services Group

Eduserv
[log in to unmask]
tel:   01225 470522
mob: 07017 031522
fax:   01225 474301
www.eduserv.org.uk




-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tristan Roddis
Sent: 19 August 2008 11:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Uses of APIs for cultural organisations?

We are discussing the merit of adding an open API to the Online
Collection part of one of our museum client's sites, and I am wondering
if anyone can think of possible reasons to do this beyond "it just feels
right"?

Off the top of my head, systems that access an API can do various things:

- aggregate information
- provide alternative representations
- provide alternative interfaces
- syndicate information
- other (please state)

Of these, some examples I can think of are:

- aggregators: e.g. National Museums Online Learning Project[1], ArtStor
and others via OAI-PMH[2]
- other representations: e.g. mashups (which?), creating tag clouds, etc.
- alternative interfaces: e.g. more accessible versions, desktop
application versions, iphone/mobile versions
- syndicating information: blog 'widgets' (which?), ArtShare Facebook
app.[3]

However, all of these are fairly generic or fairly sparse! Can anybody
think of other concrete examples of how information is being re-purposed
from cultural institutions? Or, any ways in which an API could be used
that I have missed from the list above?

Thanks,

-Tristan.

[1] http://www.vam.ac.uk/about_va/online_learning/index.html
[2] http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/
[3] http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=7723691927&ref=pr

--
Tristan Roddis ~ Head of Web Development

Cogapp

Lees House,
21-33 Dyke Road.
Brighton BN1 3FE

d: +44 (0)1273 829970
t: +44 (0)1273 821600
f: +44 (0)1273 829988

www.cogapp.com <http://www.cogapp.com>

blog.cogapp.com <http://blog.cogapp.com>/ -- "the art and science of
engagement"/



**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************



Unless otherwise agreed expressly in writing by a senior manager of
Eduserv, this communication is to be treated as confidential and the
information in it may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose
for which it has been sent.
If you have reason to believe that you are not the intended recipient
of this communication, please contact the sender immediately.
No employee or agent is authorised to enter into any binding agreement
or contract on behalf of Eduserv or Eduserv Technologies Ltd., unless
that agreement is subsequently confirmed by the conclusion of a written
contract or the issue of a purchase order.
Eduserv (Limited by Guarantee) – company number 3763109 - and
Eduserv Technologies Ltd – company number – 4256630 - are both
companies incorporated in England and Wales and have their registered
offices at Queen Anne House, 11 Charlotte Street, Bath, BA1 2NE.


**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************



Unless otherwise agreed expressly in writing by a senior manager of 
Eduserv, this communication is to be treated as confidential and the 
information in it may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose
for which it has been sent.
If you have reason to believe that you are not the intended recipient
of this communication, please contact the sender immediately.
No employee or agent is authorised to enter into any binding agreement
or contract on behalf of Eduserv or Eduserv Technologies Ltd., unless
that agreement is subsequently confirmed by the conclusion of a written
contract or the issue of a purchase order.
Eduserv (Limited by Guarantee) – company number 3763109 - and 
Eduserv Technologies Ltd – company number – 4256630 - are both 
companies incorporated in England and Wales and have their registered 
offices at Queen Anne House, 11 Charlotte Street, Bath, BA1 2NE.


**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************