For those comic book geeks … er, um … collectors in the audience: Marvel Entertainment’s new API allows you to build Marvel Comics apps for your own use. That last part (“for your own use”) was important. You can’t market the apps for revenue. The Disney-owned company is opening up the data from its 75-year publishing history, including cover art, characters, and comic book crossover events, for developers. This “free for all” gives them access to metadata for more than 30,000 comics and 7,000 series. This interesting information came from Upstart Business Journal in their article, “Marvel Comics opens up its metadata for amazing Spider-Apps.”

Marvel’s API can be used only for non-commercial applications, but it should still get the attention of the Sheldons and Leonards out there.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.