Door Kelly Davis, Research Services – Hoofd Collectie IT

Last year, the Rijksmuseum launched a new data platform and a modern suite of Data Services, built on Linked Open Data principles. These services provide a more flexible and sustainable foundation for sharing collection information, ensuring greater interoperability with the wider heritage and research communities. 

With these new services in place, several of our older APIs are now being retired. These legacy APIs are no longer updated and will soon be permanently discontinued. An existing API key will no longer be required for any of the replacement services. 

The table below summarizes the changes and their replacements: 

Legacy API	Use	Replacement	Notes
OAI-PMH (legacy)	Sharing and harvesting metadata records	OAI-PMH (new)	Fully compliant replacement.
Usersets / Usersets Details	Retrieving legacy Rijksstudio sets	None	Discontinued; data dump available here until 05-01-2026.
Collection Image	Retrieving legacy image tiles	IIIF Image API	Fully compliant replacement.
Collection Details	Retrieving object details	Linked Data Resolver	Color data removed.
Collection Search	Searching the collection	Search API	Faceted API; returns identifiers for use in the Linked Data Resolver.

If you are currently using one of these legacy APIs, please review your integrations and update them to the replacement services. You may also wish to reharvest any data of interest before the shutdown date. 

A complete overview of the new APIs, including documentation and examples, is available at: 
👉 https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/docs/ 

The shutdown of the legacy APIs will be 05-01-2026 (January 5, 2026).  

These changes mark an important step toward providing a more stable, modern, and interoperable data service for the future. Thank you for being part of our developer and research community as we continue to improve the ways in which Rijksmuseum data can be accessed and reused.