Helsinki University Library’s open data web service offers the vast majority of the library’s data in easy-to-use JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format. This interesting news came from the blog post, “Helsinki University Library opens its data for the general public.”
Citizens and businesses can retrieve library’s data from the service for personal or commercial purposes. There are plans to expand and develop the service even further in the future.
The service was implemented by the Helsinki University Library’s application development group. Helsinki University Library has long been a pioneer in the application of information technology, but the current closed library system prevented the library catalog data from appearing in search engines such as Google. The upcoming new library system should have built-in support for open APIs.
What is more collaborative than being open and having access? Having a strategy that focuses on the problems people want to solve or the capabilities they want to support, and allowing experimental approaches can result in dynamic results.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in taxonomies, metadata, and semantic enrichment to make your content findable.
