Library-related API’s

Thanks to Roy Tennant for compiling a list of Library-related API’s.  From a variety of services that can validate and be used to leverage additional information to a number of tools and specifications, this is a handy list of a number of essential API’s that can be used by many Libraries.

For those not familiar with them, an application programming interface (or API) is a set of functions, procedures, methods or classes that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs.  Submit a chunk of data like an ISBN and an API can return a title and perhaps other related data.  This is an oversimplication as many services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) API can handle many different types of data and respond handily with standardized output.  Submission interfaces are often avoided with API’s and data is returned in a format like XML that can be more easily repurposed than an HTML results page.  API’s have become quite fasionable with major Internet players like Google and Amazon and Facebook making their API’s widely available to developers.  As indicated by part of the list compiled by Roy, there are many Library-oriented API’s based on standards like Z39.50 or OAI that have been developed by Libraries and are often forgotten with all the big Internet players.