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The Entity API allows you to search for or retrieve information about entities that are referred to by items available in Europeana. It presently offers 3 methods:
Retrieval of the complete metadata set associated with an Entity
In the context of Europeana APIs, an entity can be:
a person (or “agent”), for instance Lili Boulanger or Claude Debussy;
a topic (or “concept”) like Art Nouveau, migration or Musique Concrète
a place, for instance Perpignan, Bratislava or Arnhem
a time period, for instance the 21st century
Entities are helpful to provide context to an item and relate it to other items that have entities in common, which helps users to discover other items in the collection. They are linked to external data sources and controlled vocabularies like Wikidata, AAT, VIAF, ULAN, and Geonames and are regularly updated and consolidated. The Entity API allows you to search for or retrieve information about entities that are referred to by items available in Europeana.It presently offers 3 methods:
Retrieval of the complete metadata set associated with an Entity;
A way to suggest entities based on a string;
a lookup method for resolving external URIs.
This collection is regularly updated and consolidated from external data sources so that the metadata is kept as fresh as possible.
Identifiers for entities
As linked open data resources, all Europeana entities are identified using URIs defined under the data.europeana.eu namespace. This means that such identifiers are content negotiable to either the Europeana Website or APIs depending on the format requested via the Accept header.
The metadata that is made available for an entity is typically obtained from external data sources such as Wikidata. This data can also be complemented or changed to better fit the context in which they are used in Europeana. All this information is kept internally apart with its own provenance information for transparency and to facilitate its maintenance and management.
Field Datatype Description Entity id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Entity. … all metadata fields depending on the entity class … proxies Array (Object (Proxy)) The proxies represent a snapshot of the metadata that was aggregated from source and which will be consolidated into the main entity. Proxy id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Entity. type String The type of the resource. Always set to "Proxy". … all metadata fields obtained from the data source depending on the entity class … proxyFor String (URI) A reference to the entity that this Proxy corresponds to proxyIn Object (Proxy Aggregation) Represents the result of the aggregation of metadata of this entity from a specific data source. Proxy Aggregation id String (URI) The unique identifier of the aggregation corresponding to the associated Proxy. type String The type of the resource. Always set to "Aggregation". created String (Datetime) The time at which the metadata was obtained from the source. The value must be a Literal expressed as xsd:dateTime with the UTC timezone expressed as 'Z'. modified String (Datetime) The time at which the metadata was modified from the source, after creation. The value must be a Literal expressed as xsd:dateTime with the UTC timezone expressed as 'Z'. rights String (URI) The uri of the rights statement that indicates the copyright, usage and access rights of the metadata of the entity. source String (URI) The URI of the source vocabulary where the metadata for the entity was obtained from.
Supported classes of entities
There are five classes of entities supported by this API, namely: Agent, Place, Concept, TimeSpan and Organisation. The following subsection describe the metadata fields used to describe the entities.
Agent
The Agent entity comprises people, either individually or in groups, who have the potential to perform intentional actions for which they can be held responsible.
Field Datatype Description Agent id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Agent. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Agent" for agents. depiction Object (Web Resource) A image resource where the entity is shown. isShownBy Object (Web Resource) A image resource related to the entity. prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the entity. altLabel Object (LangMap) Alternative forms of the name of the entity. dateOfBirth String The date the agent (person) was born. dateOfEstablishment String The date on which the agent (corporate body) was established or founded. dateOfDeath String The date the agent (person) died. dateOfTermination String The date on which the agent (corporate body) was terminated or dissolved. date String A significant date associated with the agent. placeOfBirth String (URI) The town, city, province, state, and/or country in which a person was born. placeOfDeath String (URI) The town, city, province, state, and/or country in which a person died. gender String The gender with which the agent identifies. professionOrOccupation Array (String (URI)) The profession or occupation in which the agent works or has worked. biographicalInformation Object (LangMap) Information pertaining to the life or history of the agent. note Object (LangMap) Information related to the entity. isPartOf Array (String (URI)) Reference to an agent that the described agent is part of. hasPart Array (String (URI)) Reference to an Agent that is part of the Agent being described (e.g. part of a corporation). hasMet Array (String (URI)) Reference to another entity which the Agent has “met” in a broad sense. For example a reference to a Place. isRelatedTo Array(String(URI)) Reference to other entities, particularly other agents, with whom the agent is related in a generic sense. identifier String An identifier for the entity. sameAs Array (String (URI)) URI of an equivalent entity in other vocabulary. inScheme Array (String (URI)) The concept scheme(s) that this entity belongs to. isAggregatedBy Object (Aggregation) Represents the results of consolidating into a single representation the metadata obtained from different data sources.
Place
A physical location associated to a cultural heritage object. Presently, covers European countries and the most relevant places.
Field Datatype Description Place id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Place. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Place" for places. depiction Object (Web Resource) A image resource where the entity is shown. isShownBy Object (Web Resource) A image resource related to the entity. prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the entity. altLabel Object (LangMap) Alternative forms of the name of the entity. lat Number The latitude coordinate of the Place. long Number The longitude coordinate of the Place. alt Number The altitude of the Place. note Object (LangMap) Information related to the entity. hasPart Array (String (URI)) Reference to an agent that the described agent is part of. isPartOf Array (String (URI)) Reference to an Agent that is part of the Agent being described (e.g. part of a corporation). isNextInSequence Array (String (URI)) Used to represent a sequence of Place entities over time e.g. the historical layers of the city of Troy. sameAs Array(String(URI)) URI of an equivalent entity in other vocabulary. inScheme Array(String(URI)) The concept scheme(s) that this entity belongs to. isAggregatedBy Object (Aggregation) Represents the results of consolidating into a single representation the metadata obtained from different data sources.
Time Span
A period of time having a beginning, an end and a duration. Presently, only centuries AD are available in the Entity Collection.
Field Datatype Description Time Span id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Time Span. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "TimeSpan". depiction Object (Web Resource) A image resource where the entity is shown. isShownBy Object (Web Resource) A image resource related to the entity. prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the entity. altLabel Object (LangMap) Alternative forms of the name of the entity. begin String The date the timespan started, represented in the form of an ISO 8601 date starting with the year and with hyphens (YYYY-MM-DD). end String The date the timespan finshed represented in the form of an ISO 8601 date starting with the year and with hyphens (YYYY-MM-DD). note Object (LangMap) Information related to the entity. isPartOf Array (String (URI)) Reference to a timespan of which the described timespan is a part. hasPart Array (String (URI)) Reference to a timespan which is part of the described Timespan. isNextInSequence Array (String (URI)) Can be used to represent a sequence of periods of time. sameAs Array(String(URI)) URI of an equivalent entity in other vocabulary. inScheme Array(String(URI)) The concept scheme(s) that this entity belongs to. isAggregatedBy Object (Aggregation) Represents the results of consolidating into a single representation the metadata obtained from different data sources.
Concept
A Concept is defined as a unit of thought or meaning that comes from an organised knowledge base (such as subject terms from a thesaurus or controlled vocabulary) where URIs or local identifiers have been created to represent each concept.
Field Datatype Description Concept id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Concept. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Concept". depiction Object (Web Resource) A image resource where the Conceptis shown. isShownBy Object (Web Resource) A image resource related to the Concept. prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the Concept. altLabel Object (LangMap) Alternative forms of the name of the Concept. note Object (LangMap) Information related to the Concept. notation Array (Datatype Object) The notation in which the Concept is represented. broader Array(String(URI)) A broader concept in the same thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. narrower Array(String(URI)) A narrower concept in the same thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. related Array(String(URI)) A related concept in the same thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. broadMatch Array(String(URI)) A broader matching concept from another thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. narrowMatch Array(String(URI)) A narrower matching concept from another thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. relatedMatch Array(String(URI)) A related matching concept from another thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. closeMatch Array(String(URI)) A close matching concept from another thesaurus or controlled vocabulary. exactMatch Array(String(URI)) URI of an equivalent Concept in other vocabulary. inScheme Array(String(URI)) The concept scheme(s) that this Concept belongs to. isAggregatedBy Object (Aggregation) Represents the results of consolidating into a single representation the metadata obtained from different data sources. proxies Array (Object (Proxy)) The proxies represent a snapshot of the metadata that was aggregated from source and which will be consolidated into the main entity.
Organisation
The organisation providing data directly or via an aggregator.
Field Datatype Description Organisation id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Organisation. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Organization". depiction Object (Web Resource) A image resource where the Organisation is shown. isShownBy Object (Web Resource) A image resource related to the Organisation. prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the Organisation. acronym Object (LangMap) The acronym of the Organisation. altLabel Object (LangMap) Alternative forms of the name of the Organisation. hiddenLabel Array (String) A lexical label not meant to be displayed. description Object (LangMap) A description for this Organisation. logo Object (WebResource) A image resource of the logo for this Organisation. europeanaRole Array (Object (Reference or Europeana Role)) The role in Europeana for this Organisation. country Object (Reference or Place) The country of this Organisation language Array (String) The official language(s) of the Organisation. homepage String (URL) The homepage of the Organisation. phone String The phone number of the Organisation. mbox String The contact email address of the Organisation. hasAddress Object (Address) The address of the Organisation. aggregatesFrom Array (Object (Reference or Organisation)) The Organisations that this Organisation aggregated from. aggregatedVia Array (Object (Reference or Organisation)) The Organisations that aggregate content from this Organisation. identifier Arrray (String) An identifier for the Organisation. sameAs Array (String(URI)) URI of an equivalent entity in other vocabulary or data source. isAggregatedBy Object (Aggregation) Represents the results of consolidating into a single representation the metadata obtained from different data sources. proxies Array (Object (Proxy)) The proxies represent a snapshot of the metadata that was aggregated from source and which will be consolidated into the main entity. Address id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Address. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Address". streetAddress String The street address associated to the address of the Organisation. postalCode String The postal code associated to the address of the Organisation. postOfficeBox String The post office box associated to the address of the Organisation. locality String The city or locality associated to the address of the Organisation. countryName String The country associated to the address of the Organisation. hasGeo String (URI) The geo URI containing the latitude and longitude coordinates of the Organisation. Europeana Role id String (URI) The unique identifier of the Role. type String The type of the entity. Always set to "Concept". prefLabel Object (LangMap) The preferred form of the name of the Role.
Other classes of resources that are common to all entities
Field Datatype Description Web Resource (ie. depiction or isShownBy) id String The URL of the media resource type String The type of the resource. Always set to "WebResource". source String The source where the media resource was obtained from, typically the identifier of a record. thumbnail String The URL of a lower resolution thumbnail. Aggregation id String The identifier of the aggregation. type String The type of the resource. Always set to "Aggregation". created String (Datetime) The time at which the entity was first created in Europeana. The value must be a Literal expressed as xsd:dateTime with the UTC timezone expressed as 'Z'. modified String (Datetime) The time at which the metadata for the entity was modified as a result of an update from the source vocabulary or manually. The value must be a Literal expressed as xsd:dateTime with the UTC timezone expressed as 'Z'. pageRank Number A non-negative integer specifying the page rank obtained from Wikidata for this resource. recordCount Integer A non-negative integer specifying the number of items in Europeana that refer to this entity. score Number A non-negative integer specifying the score number to be used when ranking this entity in search, suggest and enrich methods. aggregates Array (String (URI)) The identifiers of all proxy aggregations from which the metadata for this entity was obtained from and consolidated.
Getting Started
What you need to know about this API:
Adopts linked open data standards
Supports JSON-LD and RDF/XML (only for retrieving entity data)
Requires read access
Retrieving an Entity
Retrieves all metadata available for a specific entity. This includes all labels (preferred, alternative or others when applicable), descriptive and contextual information such as references to other entities and also references to external data sources (ie. correferencing). For a full list of data fields, please see the supported classes of entities section.
The type of the entity. One of: “agent“, “place“, “concept“, “timespan“, “organization“
IDENTIFIER
path
The local identifier of the entity.
ACCEPT
header
Indicates the preferred format(s) via which the entity is to be represented if the format is accepted by the service. Both JSON-LD and RDF/XML are supported.
FORMAT
path
Convenience method where the format is indicated as a path parameter instead of via the Accept header.
profile
query
A parameter used to define the extent of the response. Two profiles are supported, “internal“ and “external“ (default).
internal: Presents the available metadata for an entity and associated administrative information. The metadata available for each entity is described in the Supported classes of entities section.
external: Presents the internal view of metadata as described in Internal view of an entity section, in addition to the information present in the external profile.
The resolve method was designed to search for entities in the Entity Collection that match a given identifier used by an external source. The response redirects you to the corresponding Europeana Entity through its URI. In case there is no equivalent Entity in Europeana, an HTTP 404 is returned. This method makes use of the co-reference information typically present within owl:sameAs properties (or skos:exactMatch in the case of entities of type skos:Concept) for the lookup.
Indicates the preferred format(s) which will be used by content negotiation to redirect to either the Europeana website for display formats or this API for machine readable formats.
Response
On success, the method returns an HTTP 301 with the Europeana URI within the Location Header field.
Request GET https://api.europeana.eu/entity/resolve?wskey=apidemo&uri=http://dbpedia.org/resource/Leonardo_da_Vinci Response HTTP 301 data.europeana.eu/agent/146741
Search for an entity
Search for entities in the Entity Collection based on a given selection criteria.
The text or search criteria to be used for searching.
qf
query
A search query filter, ie. a filter is applied on the result list to remove unwanted results and therefore has no effect on ranking. This parameter can be used multiple types if more than one query filter is needed.
type
query
Used to restrict matching to a specific entity class, or otherwise match all entity classes if either 'all' or no type is indicated.
scope
query
Used to restrict matching to a specific scope of entities. The only possible value for the moment is 'europeana' to limit results to entities that are referenced in the main Europeana database.
lang
query
A two letter ISO639 code of the language used for searching the text against. It also determines the data that will be returned for the entity description by keeping only the data that is qualifed with the requested language.
Available values : en, nl, fr, de, es, sv, it, fi, da, el, cs, sk, sl, pt, hu, lt, pl, ro, bg, hr, lv, ga, mt, et, no, ca, ru, eu
profile
query
A parameter used to define the extent of the response. Only one profile is supported, namely “facets“.
facets: Performs the faceting on the selected fields and presents the counts from the top most frequent value for a field to the lowest.
page
query
The number of the page (defaults to 1).
pageSize
query
The number of items to retrieve, maximum is 100, defaults to 10.
sort
query
A comma separated list of fields used for sorting the results. The field can be suffixed with the order in which the results are sorted, either 'asc' or 'desc' by the following: <field_name>+<sort_order>. The special keyword 'score' can be used to order by the ranking as determined by the search engine (which is the default).
facet
query
A comma separated list of fields to be returned as facets for the given query.
“Search for all organization entities that have the word ‘unternehmen’ in their metadata: https://api.europeana.eu/entity/search?&query=unternehmen&type=organization
Response
Field Datatype Description Search Result Page id String (URI) The identifier of the search results page. type String The type of the resource. Always set to "ResultPage". partOf Object (Result List) The list of all results matching the search query. facets Array (Object (Facet)) The list of all facets that reflect the results that match the search query. total Integer The total number of entities in the result page. items Array (Entity) The entities that are part of this result page. next String (URI) A reference to the previous page in the sequence of pages that make up the search results. prev String (URI) A reference to the next page in the sequence of pages that make up the search results. Search Result List id String (URI) The identifier of the search result list. type String The type of the resource. Always set to "ResultList". total Integer The total number of results matching the search query. first String (URI) Indicates the first preceding page of results in the result list. last String (URI) Indicates the furthest proceeding page of results in the result list. Facet type String The type of the resource. Always set to "Facet". field String The name of the field being facetted. values Array (Object (Facet Value)) The top most frequent values that were found in the field. Facet Value label String The value that was found in the field. value Integer The total number of entities that contain this value in the field.
Roadmap and Changelog
The current version of the Entities API is 0.10.3 (December 2021) which has support for suggest, retrieval and resolution by external identifier. It is currently available as a Public Alpha, which is the first public version released primarily to get feedback from you. Do note that this means that changes can be introduced which could break backwards compatibility. It also means that to use this API you need a separate API key than for the other Europeana APIs. To see the changes made for the current version and also all previous releases, see the API changelog in the project GitHub.