EuropeanaBot

ELAG 2014
EuropeanaBot – using open data and open APIs to present digital collections
Peter Mayr, administrator for the ILL-system at the North Rhine- Westphalian library consortium (hbz) in Cologne

(see description of talk)

Serendipity vs standard search. The library is a "precious provider of unpredictability"

TwitterBots are a class of software. EuropeanaBot is based on Europeana api - uses open data collections to sweep interesting things, and make some kind of catalogue enrichment. E.g. list of Nobel Prize winners, Guardian api, place names etc.The Guradian api allows to get news and keywords with corresponding images. Wordnik api: every day at 1pm a word is published and Europeana looks for relevant images. Wikipedia api works in a similar way.

There's of course a Digital Persona behind the EuropeanaBot (he likes to post images of cats).

Conclusion: we hide great objects behind search forms, so we need more serendipity! Let our collections speak for themselves. Not too much work and maintenance is required and it brings results. People out there will listen.

Code behind the EuropeanaBot api: https://github.com/hatorikibble/twitter-europeanabot