This is really fantastic to see in the wild on HN. In my day job, I’m part of the team that sponsors (i.e. covers hosting costs for) this and a number of other really interesting datasets.
I've integrated the Smithsonian API into my in-development VR exhibit design app.
It's very distractingly awesome searching for something like "dog painting" and wandering around the exhibit created from the results. There's just so much.
Thank you for helping making this resource available.
Do you have anything online about your VR exhibit design app? This sounds really cool!
Our team wasn't involved in the Smithsonian API portion—we really focus on the bulk access pattern, mostly via object storage (e.g. S3). That is, we see object storage / "just give me all the data" as the base of the pyramid for data access.
Purpose built APIs that add value can be consumers of data via more general access patterns. Specialized APIs can add heaps of value for a given use case, but they can also limit the breadth of applications for other use cases.
It sounds like you may be more familiar with that effort than I am. In my interactions with SI (and others like NARA), my takeaway is that these people are ridiculously smart. We try to be helpful cloud experts where formats and access patterns are concerned, but we start with the assumption that the people coming to us wanting to share data are the experts in their data. From my vantage point, SI seems pretty smart :-)
https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open-access/