Brooklyn Museum Has An API
The Brooklyn Museum recently opened an API for their online collection. In and of itself this is impressive and awesome but the collection was just put online a mere six months ago.
Allowing access to all of the collection data is a huge achievement for researchers, individuals and countries of origin. First, researchers get a wealth of information from afar without the need to travel. Secondly, individuals get to casually peruse the collection for fun, school research, and socially. Finally and I believe the most import is virtually repatriating pieces in collections. For example a museum in Cameroon can now connect with the Brooklyn Museum API and use a piece from their collection to help illustrate and show an example of a Guardian Figure. This is cool and all that educators and researchers have access to this from afar but it is even more important that the piece is not even on public display in Brooklyn. Now this educator in Cameroon is using information garnered from a huge distance away on a piece not even on display and allowing another level of information that would not have been possible without this API going online.
It is now up to more museums to take the steps forward and release API hooks so researchers and the public can begin to start connecting our collective history in a more robust and meaningful way.
