A presentation from Museums and the Web 2009. There has been an encouraging surge of interest in the museums sector in opening up museum data and building APIs on museum collections databases. However, a museum's collections are not the only and sometimes not even the most interesting service which a museum provides. Events, communities, shopping, learning and interpretation are all areas where museums have lively and engaging offerings. These areas typically have a Web presence, and therefore the possibility exists to build an API or make use of an existing API to open up that offering. Furthermore, as museum collections’ content becomes more readily accessible on the Web, museums need to focus more and more on their value-add, the expertise and authority which they bring to the interpretation of their own collections and those of others. Mini-Workshop: APIs- how and why [Mini-Workshop]

1. What is your museum good at and how do you build an API for it? Richard Morgan Web Technical Manager, Victoria and Albert Museum