University Information Services with APIs

by Kin Lane on 05/29/2012

APIs are making information more accessible across many industries and sectors, but one area I haven’t seen a lot of movement, until recently, is at Universities.

Last month, Harvard openly licensed their library meta data and through a partnership with the Digital Public Library of America, made it available via APIs. But today’s story is more about APIs driving the operations side of higher ed at the University of Washington.

Under the Universities of Washingtons web services site, you can learn, discover and connect to 29 separate University APIs:

Its grest to see that the University is trying to create a single directory of all University web services, and even has an API suggestion service where students and faculty can submit and vote on ideas for new, useful campus APIs.

With the volatility of school funding, online learning and just overall competition in higher ed, Universities need to start noticing of the transformative powers of APIs, and how it can make University operations more transparent, accessible and nimble, and potentially even save money when it comes to empowering the students themselves to build interfaces for accessing vital University information.