The Fitzwilliam Museum: Open Data Services

Introduction

This is the Fitzwilliam Museum's Data Services server.
If you were looking for our collections search online, try Collections Explorer.
These services are designed to provide technical and machine oriented, search & reference, interfaces to our collections data.

Fitzwilliam Museum Collections Data

The Fitzwilliam Museum has been steadily expanding the number of object records available in its online catalogue since 2001. As of 2012 there are over 170,000 records that can be accessed through the Fitzwilliam's Collections Explorer.

We are now making available some of the data in these records as part of an open data service aimed at furthering learning, understanding and research. It is hoped that this will enable new applications and services to be built using collections data from the Fitzwilliam and elsewhere, as well as encourage new connections to be made across different objects and collections.

What is available?

There are two levels of data available, defined by the level of detail and the licence associated with each. These are:

1. Basic record data

In the case of object records (we may add data from other types of record in the future) this consists of outline data. It is not a full catalogue entry but enough data to identify the object and assist in resource discovery. Not all objects have data in all the fields listed here. The object fields include:
• Object category (type)
• Object name (sub-type)
• Title
• Maker / maker dates
• Production place
• Production date
• Technique
• Materials
• Object reference number
• Source collection

Licence
The basic record data is dedicated to the public domain under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).
See Licence and Guidelines here.

How do I get it?
• OAI-PMH service
• Application Programming Interface (API) service

2. Extended record data

This includes additional information for objects, collections and other resources.

Licence
Extended record data from the Fitzwilliam Museum is licenced as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA).
See Licence and Guidelines here.

How do I get it?
• SPARQL service
• Application Programming Interface (API) service

Images

Although image files are referenced in some of the data sets, they are not made available under the same licence terms.
The images referenced are low resolution (up to a maximum of 1024 pixels in either direction) and are licenced under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence.
This means that although you are free to download them, they must not be adapted, must not be used for commercial purposes and attribution must be made to the Fitzwilliam Museum. For other uses please contact the Museum's Image Library.

This licence applies only to images in which there are no third party rights, and does not apply for example to images of works which are still within copyright.

We gratefully acknowledge support
during initial development
of these services through the:

Open Book Project