You used to have to step into a museum to marvel at and study the artworks they possessed. Nowadays, you can browse through the collections of hundreds of galleries, libraries, museums and archives online. Europeana.eu is the gateway to the collections of thousands of cultural heritage institutions throughout Europe, with more than 50 million objects at your fingertips for you to discover.
Type what you're interested in into the search bar on europeana.eu and see what comes up. The clear rights statement on every object page and the 'Download' button make it easy for you to find out if and how you can reuse any cultural heritage object available on Europeana.eu.
But what if you want to download the metadata of hundreds or thousands of objects at the same time? What if you're interested in reusing a large dataset, creating your own website, researching a corpus of objects, or building a dynamic online platform? With Europeana's renewed online API resources you can easily get started reusing our metadata in a machine-readable way.
The gateway to Europeana APIs
The new API page is the place to start your journey into the data. Whether you're a seasoned developer who just needs to request an API key and a link to our documentation, or whether you've never heard of the acronym API before, europeana.eu/apis is the best place to start.
The new page sends you where you need to go: to request an API key, to find the API documentation page you were looking for, to access the FAQ and answer your pressing questions, or to the learning platform to get the background info you need to start using our APIs.
Learn about APIs and how to use them
From September 2024 onwards Europeana will organise instructor-led training sessions to introduce our APIs to anyone who is interested. Do you feel like you need support to understand how to reuse Europeana's data? Sign up to learn more about the Europeana Academy.
Europeana's API documentation, redesigned
The documentation for Europeana's award-winning APIs has been crucial in allowing anyone to reuse our metadata in an easy machine-readable and interoperable way for years. Europeana's API offer has changed significantly in the past years to follow the changes in the digital cultural heritage sector. All of Europeana's API documentation has been migrated to a new online environment with new features that aim to help everyone understand our technical infrastructure as quickly as possible. This way, you can spend less time reading and more time developing your project.
Europeana's new API documentation:
- includes information on APIs that didn't have public documentation before, such as the User Set API, the Recommendation API, and the Thumbnail API
- provides more contextual documentation: like info on how to access the different APIs, an explanation of how we handle Linked Data, an extensive FAQ, a list of active libraries and plugins, and overview pages that help you choose which API to use
- more API call examples and links to the API Swagger consoles directly within the documentation pages. Now you can try out your API calls from within a documentation page to see what the result is before you start integrating anything into your own code or project.
- better menus and hierarchies that allow you to navigate through our extensive documentation quickly and with purpose, without ever getting lost.
- the choice between light and dark mode!
With all of these new tools and resources, you should be set to start using Europeana's data in your digital projects. If you have any questions or need help you can get in contact with us by e-mailing api@europeana.eu.
Are you in the middle of creating a project that reuses digital cultural heritage, or have you reused objects from Europeana in the past? We'd love to hear from you! Send us your story of reuse to share your work with our wide network.