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All, Trove [1] is more than just a discovery portal, it’s also a source of machine-readable data drawn from cultural heritage organisations around Australia, including the National Library of Australia and all State and Territory libraries. Through Trove’s API [2] you can access millions of records [3] to build your own tools, applications or visualisations. With GovHack 2013 [4] approaching, we’re inviting developers to take our API and see what they can create. What could you do with 90 million newspaper articles, 7 million photos or objects, or the details of more than 17 million books? For additional inspiration NSLA (National and State Libraries Australasia) are offering a prize to GovHack entries that make use of data from Trove. [5] Here’s a few possibilities to get you thinking: * How might you use or visualise resources relating to World War I or the 1967 Referendum? * Are there new ways of exposing state based material in Trove that isn’t held by the relevant state library? * Could you enrich individual library catalogues by displaying a short list of relevant Trove resources? * Where next for the idea of ‘generous interfaces’ as demonstrated by Mitchell Whitelaw’s Trove Mosaic [6] and Manly Images [7] projects? * Could you use photographs of places to automatically populate social media tools? What about creating a map-based view of Trove resources? * What about combining spatial and temporal data to create a visual timeline of newspaper publication? To get started you need to sign up for an API key [2] and have a look through the API documentation. [8] We’ll also be posting extra hints and tips in the API section of the Trove Forum. [9] To help you find your way through the riches of Trove, staff from the National Library of Australia will be available as data mentors at GovHack 2013 in Canberra. We’re looking forward to seeing what you make! Cheers, Tim [1] http://trove.nla.gov.au/ [2] http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/api [3] http://trove.nla.gov.au/system/counts [4] http://www.govhack.org/ [5] http://www.nsla.org.au/news/govhack-2013-include-trove-prize [6] http://mtchl.net/TroveMosaic/ [7] http://mtchl.net/ManlyImages [8] http://trove.nla.gov.au/general/api-technical [9] http://trove.nla.gov.au/forum/forumdisplay.php?30-Trove-API ---- Dr Tim Sherratt Manager, Trove National Library of Australia Parkes Place Canberra ACT 2600 p: +61 (0)2 6262 1224 e: [log in to unmask]