Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
involving the development of portals that either harvest or directly
import metadata and then tailor it to provide a functioning cross-search
facility. The Vision and Sound Portal based at the EDINA data centre
in Edinburgh is just one example, bringing together visual and audio
content for use in a higher education context.
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Such portals have met
with partial success, but they have also been expensive, involving much
staff time in bringing content partners on board, and the laborious
process of squeezing the metadata into the shape required for cross-
search functionality.
To begin to overcome this issue, content providers need to become
much more undiscriminating in how they allow users to gain access to
their content. As mentioned above, previous methods of delivery have
focused on making content available via the organization's own website
and perhaps also via a portal. But such mechanisms still restrict the
contexts in which users can understand and manipulate the content.
New tools and standards for content sharing
There is now a suite of different tools and standards, of varying levels of
complexity, that allow cultural content to be harvested, imported,
reused and revisualized by global audiences. Content providers should
no longer try to confine themselves to one standard by which to make
their content available, but should embrace a range of lightweight
technologies. Ellis (2009) provides an excellent recapitulation of the
issue). Such technologies include RSS, JSON and microformats, and
richer standards such as RDF, which form part of the network of ideas
that mesh together as the semantic web. Perhaps most importantly, the
rise of the API (application programming interface) allows other users
to build services and tools based on one's content.
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The website Flickr
is an excellent example, originally conceived as a site for the upload of
photographic content. The installation of an API on Flickr allowed for
a range of subsidiary services to exploit this interface and build services
around it. Users can now create postcards, posters, books and other
personalized goods based on the content they have uploaded.
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Cultural heritage institutions are now starting to explore the
advantages that can be gained from APIs. The Brooklyn Museum in
New York is one organization pushing at the boundaries of possibility,
and its API has enabled the creation of numerous services that exploit
