The toolset was developed for the collection database of German Emigration Center, Bremerhaven, Germany in the context of the museum4punkt0 initiative. It allows to fetch data from a CollectiveAccess database, cache it in MongoDB and make it available via a GraphQL API.
The toolset consists of an express.js based CollectiveAccess Data Aggregator and an express.js based GraphQL API with MongoDB Atlas as database.
The purpose of the toolset is to preprocess data from the native CollectiveAccess API and decouple data aggregation from end user interaction. Item relations can be denormalized and all relevant data embedded in a single document. With GraphQL it is possible to easily execute very specific requests and to avoid underfetching (subsequent requests necessary) or overfetching (to much ballast of unnecessary data). Using the toolset as as mid layer makes it more convenient to use CollectiveAccess as a headless collection documentation system.
This toolset is part of the project museum4punkt0 - Digital Strategies for the Museum of the Future, sub-project Experience the History of Migration Digitally. The project museum4punkt0 is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media in accordance with a resolution issued by the German Bundestag (Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany). Further information: www.museum4punkt0.de
Contracting entity: Deutsches Auswandererhaus Bremerhaven
Programming: Culture to go GbR
The components of this toolset are distributed under MIT license. For more information see the individual repositories:
CollectiveAccess Data Aggregator
GraphQL API