MLibrary API Home
From MLibrary API
An Application Programming Interface is just what it says it is -- an interface for programmers to use in developing novel applications on top of existing services/data/whatever.
Library data are traditionally stuffed into one giant system and trapped there. At MLibrary, we're beginning to develop APIs to let some of that incredibly valuable data out into the wild where it can be combined with other sources to create new services that are more valuable and wholly unexpected.
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[edit] APIs into MLibrary systems
These are APIs that expose data that we control in our systems.
[edit] Mirlyn API
Mirlyn is the MLibrary OPAC, our catalog of books, music, and just about everything else we own. The Mirlyn API exposes a simple, REST-based service that returns either JSON or XML.
[edit] MTagger API
MTagger is the University Library's social bookmarking ("tagging") tool. The MTagger API provides access to tags, users, and items.
[edit] Working APIs that access other library(-like) systems
Part of the point of having an API is to link together data from various disparate systems. The following are APIs into library and libary-like institutions, suitable for mashups with our own stuff.
[edit] Library(-like) API specifications and discussion
As APIs get more common in the library world, there are a variety of efforts to produce standards for operations common to library-like data (see below for the data and transport standards that are often used to build up these APIs).
[edit] Relevant transport and data standards
Any good API starts, hopefully, with pre-existing standards for dealing with syntax and data-encoding issues. How do we define the syntax (and broad semantics) of the data as they flow in and out of an API?
- XML, the eXtensible Markup Language
- JSON, Javascript Object Notataion, a common alternative to XML
- MARC, the infamous library metadata standard
- SRU (Search and Retrieve via URL), a Library of Congress standard for searching with CQL using normal web standards. Sometimes billed as the next-generation z39.50.
