1. Library as an IT Service
(Interoperability through APIs)
HUIT Library Technology Services
R. Stern
6/4/15
2. Metadata Digital
Content
Inventory Data Sets
API API API APIs
Interesting
Web Apps
The Opportunity
18M titles,
authors,
subjects,
locations, etc
45M Images,
books, audio,
video
holdings
availability
scientific data
geospatial
Faculty papers
etc.
Semantic Web
9. Library API landscape
• Library Cloud - Unified Metadata API
• Combines silos of descriptive metadata into a single Web Service API
• Descriptive info like title, creator, subject – what you see in HOLLIS
• PRESTO – operations data API
• HOLLIS search
• Item availability (checked out?)
• Digital content delivery API
• International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)
• DRS delivery services (paged objects, audio, documents)
• In the future: Semantic Web APIs (grant funded development)
• Linked Open Data
• RDF Triples (no more “records”), SPARQL API
10. Guiding principles
• Support innovation, interoperability, and reuse through:
• Standard HTTP web service API protocols - REST, SPARQL, JSON, XML
• Community supported metadata schemas – e.g. MODS, Dublin Core, RDF
• Community supported digital content APIs - IIIF
• Open access
11. Available today: Library Cloud
● A queryable metadata hub (solr indexed) of
Harvard library holdings
● 13M HOLLIS records, 4M visual image
records, 2M archival and special collections
items
● A pipeline for updating and enriching records
● Deployed in Amazon Web Services
● Open source software
13. Library Cloud API
● http://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items?title=peanut
s&name=Schulz
● Faceting
● http://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items.json?title=bees&
facets=name,resourceType
● Search on a facet
● http://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items?title=bees&reso
urceType=“still image”
● Api documentation -
https://wiki.harvard.edu/confluence/display/Libr
aryStaffDoc/LibraryCloud+Item+API
14. IIIF
International Image Interoperability Framework
• Opens Harvard library digital content for reuse over the Web
and allows Harvard to reuse external content
• A content delivery Web API (the digital book or digital image)
• Not a discovery API (title, author, subject)
Sample Use Cases
• Teaching: Displaying a “Virtual manuscript” where Harvard
holds some pages and Yale holds other pages
• Research: Comparison of a Harvard and British Library copy of
the same work
• Library or Museum: Creating on-line collections that include
material from multiple institutions
15. IIIF
• Harvard University
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France
• British Library
• Oxford University
• Stanford University
• Johns Hopkins University
• University of Fribourg
• Saint Louis University
• Drew University
• TextGrid
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Yale University
• Cambridge University
• ARTstor
• Cornell University
• Princeton University
• Walters Art Museum
• National Library of Norway
• The National Archives (UK)
• DPLA
• Europeana
• … and more – see http://iiif.io/community.html
• Community driven (http:iiif.io)
• Defined APIs for digital object linking and reuse
• Plug & Play software (such as Mirador)
17. IIIF APIs at the Library
• Image API
http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/5981214/0,0,1200,1200/pct:50/full/native.jpg
• Presentation API
• http://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/drs:5981093
• Uses the Shared Canvas data model and W3C Open Annotation
• Mirador uses both APIs
18. PRESTO
• Availability for Moby Dick
• http://webservices.lib.harvard.edu/rest/v2/classic/holdings/006954671
•
• HOLLIS+ Search for Moby Dick
• http://webservices.lib.harvard.edu/rest/v2/hollisplus/search/dc/?q=“Mob
y Dick”
19. Metadata
(Titles, Authors,
Subjects, etc)
Digital
Images
Inventory
Holdings,
availability, etc
Data Sets
Social science,
astronomy, GIS
Library Cloud API IIIF API PRESTO API Open APIs
Interesting
Web App
OPEN APIS - Third parties can reuse, embed, and repurpose library data…
HOLLIS
VIA
OASIS
…
Harvard DRS
Harvard Canvas?
HarvardX?
Aleph
HOLLIS+
…
Dataverse
HGL
DASH
D
a
t
a
s
o
u
r
c
e
s 5/5/15
20. Metadata
(Titles, Authors,
Subjects, etc)
Digital
Images
Related
Authorities
Names, Places
Data Sets
Social science,
astronomy, GIS
IIIF Presentation API IIIF Image API Linked Open Data Open APIs
… and Harvard can reuse data from other institutions
Stanford
Yale
Oxford (etc)
British Library
etc.
Stanford
Yale
Oxford (etc)
British Library
etc.
DBpedia
DPLA
Library of
Congress
Europeana
…
Dataverse
Open
Geoportal
DPN
D
a
t
a
s
o
u
r
c
e
s
e.g. Mirador
5/5/15
21. Examples
● Mirador
● Digital collection builder
● DRS metadata migration tool — to efficiently retrieve
descriptive metadata for migrated digital objects
● Library hackathon apps
o On an Amazon page, a button tells you if the book is in
Harvard Library
o Visualization of library content via Google Fusion
o List Harvard of relevant items for a feminist web site
o Search the Library from Android phone
o Which library is best for a particular subject?
http://which-harvard-library.hankswaydwa15.me/
23. Tim Berners-Lees 4 Rules
• Use URIs as names for things
• Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up
those names.
• When someone looks up a URI, provide useful
information, using the standards (RDF*,
SPARQL)
• Include links to other URIs. so that they can
discover more things.
24. Semantic Web API (linked data grant
project)
• Uses RDF, the language of the
web
• thisBook “has title” “Moby Dick”
– “thisBook” is a URI:
http://id.lib.harvard.edu/aleph/006954
671/catalog
– “has title” is a URI:
http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/titl
e
– “Moby Dick” is a URI:
http://www.melville.org/hmmoby.ht
m
• One uniform API for
querying and inferencing
(SPARQL)
