Our collection website is accessible via a JSON API which follows the JSONAPI specification.
Source code and documentation for our API and some basic JavaScript examples of using the API can be found in the museums’ Github account.
OPEN TO ALL
Our API is open to all and we’re always interested to see the innovative ways that external users and organisations are utilising our data.
- Combining our data with external data sets and resources, either your own or other publicly available data.
- Innovative interfaces for viewing and navigating our data (Timelines, Force Directed Graphs, Image Recognition).
- Textual analysis of our object descriptions and biographies to find patterns and hidden data/terms.
- Physical means of viewing and interacting with our collection (Alexa Skills, Motion Sensors).
- Integration with other platforms; maybe you’d like to build a TwitterBot that tweets a scientific discovery or pivotal invention each day.
- Or maybe you’d like to display our objects onto a map of your city.
Do let us know what you build at web.team@sciencemuseum.ac.uk
COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
We periodically host hack days where we bring together designers, programmers and technologists to use our datasets. Please visit our Digital Lab blog for details of previous and upcoming events.
FORMAL RESEARCH PROJECTS
If you are an institution or researcher interested in using our data for a formal research project, please get in touch so we can hear your plans at: onlinecollection@sciencemuseum.ac.uk
USING OUR API RESPONSIBLY
While we encourage the usage of our API and it’s underlying data, we ask that all copyright requirements are closely respected.
- Data in the title, made, maker and details fields: Creative Commons Zero
- Descriptions and all other text content: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence
- Imagery and photography: the licensing and copyright varies per image (please check the source.legal.rights.usage for each image).
We would also ask that requests to our API are rate limited and that you contact us at onlinecollection@sciencemuseum.ac.uk before setting up any significant daily exports or harvesting, we may be able to provide you with data exports in a more performative manner.
CHANGES TO API FORMAT
While we will endeavour to keep the format of our API backwards compatible, we can not guarantee that it will remain unchanged over time and reserve the right to modify it without prior notice.
ACCESSING OUR API
Source code and documentation for our API which can be found on the Science Museum’s GitHub repository along with some basic JavaScript examples.
