Digital Public Library of America: Launch of DPLA API Improves Security and Performance For Users

From a DPLA Post by Audrey Altman:

Digital Public Library of America recently launched a new application to run a core part of its infrastructure, the DPLA API. This software upgrade improves security, performance, reliability, and privacy for our users. It also allows developers to adapt to new services and maintain the code over time. The DPLA tech team transitioned to the new application without change or interruption in service to our users. 

The DPLA API powers search functionality on the DPLA website, the Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection, and some of our partner libraries’ websites. It also provides free, public access to DPLA’s data for researchers and application developers. The old API application, which had been in service since 2018, was becoming increasingly difficult to secure and maintain.

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…new approaches to logging and analytics tracking give more privacy to our users. While DPLA has never exposed personally identifiable information about users, these new methods make it extremely unlikely that individual use histories could be reconstructed, even by a sophisticated third party.  This is in keeping with the American Library Association’s position on user privacy.

Learn More, Read the Complete Post (564 words)

Filed under: Libraries, News, Patrons and Users, Public Libraries