Digital Technologies Librarian San Diego State University
This poster will visually present and discuss the process of automating library staff directory profiles using third party data hosted by a mixture of free and licensed Active Programming Interfaces (APIs) instead of a library data source. APIs offer an opportunity for libraries to leverage information existing in commonly used applications to remove the need to maintain the same information in a library hosted database, or on a static library webpage. Many library vendors provide access to their data through APIs and accessing this existing data can both save library staff time, and also ensure information is easily kept current. A broad discussion of the implementation of the library directory at San Diego State University (SDSU) using APIs from ORCiD profiles, SpringShare Libguides, and Ex Libris Primo will be discussed and code samples will be made available in an associated GitHub repository.
Examples of the SDSU API powered librarian profiles can be found at https://library2.sdsu.edu/people/keven-jeffery https://library2.sdsu.edu/people/pamela-jackson https://library2.sdsu.edu/people/margaret-henderson