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No API - I worked on one last year, but twas never released. Hoping to see something within the year - not just for images, but also collection data (object rec

No API - I worked on one last year, but twas never released. Hoping to see something within the year - not just for images, but also collection data (object records, for instance). Many other institutions have open APIs for their collection data, and often for images as well. See: Cooper-Hewitt (data released on github) Brooklyn Museum (API) Powerhouse Museum (API) Rijksmuseum Indianapolis Museum of Art (also data on github) Europeana (a EU-wide consortium) DPLA (similar to Europeana, but in the US) Also, lots of other institutions have open access to their images - many much more comprehensive than The Getty (not to sound bitter, but Getty is getting a lot of press for this where others have lead for years). It's really an imperative at this point - and for most institutions more a matter of when (since few have substantial technical staff) than if. The Getty is an exception, having a large, well-funded staff, but tends to be conservative in policy changes. For other examples of cultural institutions sharing images widely: National Gallery (high rez) Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Met All this just off the top of my head -

grey-area 13y ago
Thanks for all the pointers - you should make a top level comment with everything you know on this. To someone from outside the field of curation this is really heartening - to see museums moving toward open data and open access to digital reproductions.
greeneggs 13y ago
From what I can see, it is still pretty rare to release downloadable images at a decent resolution, so it is excellent that Getty is getting good press for this. For example, the National Gallery has high-resolution scans, but they aren't downloadable (perhaps you can scrape them, but that isn't accessible to most people). LACMA has only low-resolution images. Off the rest of your list, Rijksmuseum and the Brooklyn Museum have only low-resolution images, Cooper-Hewitt and Europeana have almost nothing (only very low-resolution). I haven't checked everything. Maybe you are right that it is becoming more common, but I can't see that myself. The Met is the only example I know of that compares. The Met does have decent resolution downloads available, but the Getty's downloadable scans are still much better.

grey-area 13y ago

Thanks for all the pointers - you should make a top level comment with everything you know on this. To someone from outside the field of curation this is really heartening - to see museums moving toward open data and open access to digital reproductions.

greeneggs 13y ago

From what I can see, it is still pretty rare to release downloadable images at a decent resolution, so it is excellent that Getty is getting good press for this. For example, the National Gallery has high-resolution scans, but they aren't downloadable (perhaps you can scrape them, but that isn't accessible to most people). LACMA has only low-resolution images. Off the rest of your list, Rijksmuseum and the Brooklyn Museum have only low-resolution images, Cooper-Hewitt and Europeana have almost nothing (only very low-resolution). I haven't checked everything. Maybe you are right that it is becoming more common, but I can't see that myself. The Met is the only example I know of that compares. The Met does have decent resolution downloads available, but the Getty's downloadable scans are still much better.