Week 6

APIs and Linked Data

You’ll learn about how data is made accessible via APIs and what people mean when they talk about “linked data.”

Read, view, and listen

• 2015-02-05. Dorothea Salo. MARC, Linked Data, and Human-Computer Asymmetry (7min)
• 2015-02-19. Matthew Hughes. What Is An API & What Are They Good For? (6 min)
• 2012-06-16. Manu Sporny. What is Linked Data? (video, 12 minutes)
• If this is all feeling very abstract, you might want to walk through Harvard Art Museum’s tutorial for its API. The instructions are fairly clear, although don’t worry if you have some “WTF” moments—I’m not expecting you to get this yet!

In-class activities

1. Slides: Python review and APIs, including links to the following:
   • Spotify API documentation
   • Judge my Spotify
   • GIPHY API
   • Postman API platform
   • Star Wars API
     • Web app built on Star Wars API
     • Searches to try on Star Wars API
   • Marvel API documentation
   • Use Python to work with an API
   • List of APIs
2. Video: Linked open data (also see slides)

Additional resources

• Jonny Saunders, “Surveillance Graphs,” on the dystopian possibilities of the technology that undergirds linked open data
• MIT Libraries: list of scholarly APIs
• “Cool Stuff Made with Cultural Heritage APIs“
• LinkedIn Learning: Getting started with the Postman tool for exploring APIs
• Programming Historian: “Introduction to Populating a Website with API Data”