APIs: How Machines Share and Expose Digital Collections | The Signal: Digital Preservation

" ... Adams created the APIs for the World Digital Library, an international project between approximately 190 libraries, archives and museums. The World Digital Library’s APIs describe what to expect from the API and explain how to build tools to access the WDL’s collections. Adams said, 'The APIs declare that we publish all of our data in a certain format, at a certain location and ‘here’s how you can interact with it.’ 'Adams also said that an institution’s digital-collections systems can and should evolve over time but their APIs should remain stable in order to provide  reliable access to the underlying data.  This allows outside users the stability needed to build tools which use those APIs and frequently saves time even within the same organization as, for example, the front-end or user-visible portion of a website can be improved rapidly without the need to touch the complex back-end application running on the servers ..."