As a side project, I've been putting together some experimental Yahoo Pipes (a mashup/aggregator tool) that connect Museum website and collection information to web APIs. I'd really like to hear what you all think about the work.
I went with Yahoo Pipes since I thought the platform would lend itself to sharing and quick experimentation. I wanted to explore the quality and character of the results of API calls when provided with really minimal object metadata - just artist name for example. I've put together a blog with screenshots of output (since many of the pipes need API keys) and minimal commentary. Some of the pipes are rigged to take user input, some are automated and hooked to the Metropolitan Museum's Artwork of the Day Feed. For example; A small federated search system - http://museumpipes.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/federated-search-through-pipes/ A pipe that along with Dipity creates a timeline for search results - http://museumpipes.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/dipity-timelines/ There are starter pipes for a number of tools - OpenCalais, Delicious, WordPress, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WordNet, XWordNet, TGM 1 and 2, LCSH, FAST, OCLC Identities, WorldCat, Geolocation pipes through GeoNames, New York Times Articles and Facets, a few pipes for the Brooklyn Museum Collection API, hoard.it, Google Books, Base, Images, Search, and Charts, Wikipedia Images, Pages, Categories, and Backlinks? Caveat: Some of the automated pipes break down occasionally since they rely on unstructured data - drawing from another source is really straightforward in all cases. Some just take a while to run. I'm sure most of pipes could be improved but I'm focusing on adding more sources rather than refining the ones I have. Not sure how or if they might be used? I?ll be at Museums and the Web if anyone would like to talk more. So please copy the pipes, draw from your own data sources, and give them a try. I'd be thrilled to get comments and if anyone wants to contribute their own pipes or other extensible projects, I'm happy to open up the blog. http://museumpipes.wordpress.com/ Piotr Adamczyk Analyst, The Metropolitan Museum of Art piotr.adamczyk at metmuseum.org
