Introduction to the Digital Public Library of America API

Abstract

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides access to over 11 million objects from libraries, museums, and archives. In addition to serving as an open portal for cultural heritage, literature, art, and scientific materials, the DPLA provides access to extensive metadata related to these materials via an openly available, RESTful application programming interface (API). The open API enables third party developers to create targeted applications that enable new and transformative uses of the items indexed by the DPLA. This half day tutorial will introduce participants to the DPLA's data model, describe the API, explain how to retrieve data using the API, and how to work with the retrieved data using freely available software using both interactive and programmatic techniques.