europeanaR: Exploring A Digitized Art Database with Shiny

Art provides insight into the experiences and values of a culture. We see parallels between <strong>Shiny and art</strong>. Both are canvases for <strong>sharing insight</strong>. They are used to transform information or ideas in a way that connects with people. In this spirit, our developers built <a href="https://connect.appsilon.com/europeana-app/" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><strong>EuropeanaR</strong></a>, a Shiny app for <strong>exploring Europe's digitized collection of art</strong> and cultural works. <h2>Exploring the europeanaR package</h2> Sharing data and building narratives at speed is something Shiny does well. This is in part due to a rich and healthy ecosystem of open-source packages available to R developers. Fellow Appsilonian, Alexandros Kouretesis built the R package, <a href="https://github.com/AleKoure/europeanaR" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">europeanaR</a>, for accessing the data from Europeana's web portal. <h3>What is Europeana?</h3> <a href="https://www.europeana.eu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Europeana</a> is a cultural preservation and digitization project supported by the European Union. Its purpose is to preserve and raise awareness of European cultural heritage - including art. Europeana has developed a web portal containing a database for artwork throughout Europe. It is this database that we explore from the Shiny application with the europeanaR package. <blockquote><a href="https://demo.appsilon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Explore Appsilon's R Shiny Demo Gallery</a>. A curated collection of unique Shiny dashboards.</blockquote> <h3>Install europeanaR package</h3> You can install  the development version by running: <pre><code> # install.packages("devtools") devtools::install_github("AleKoure/europeanaR") </code></pre> And be sure to sign up for a free <a href="https://pro.europeana.eu/page/get-api" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">API key from Europeana</a>. Once you've signed up, you can input your key by adding: <pre><code> europeanaR::set_key("YOUR_KEY_GOES_HERE") </code></pre> <img class="size-full wp-image-16965 aligncenter" src="https://webflow-prod-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/6525256482c9e9a06c7a9d3c%2F65b01c6c85f60a598abd80ef_europeanaR-package.webp" alt="europeanaR R package logo to connect Europeana API" width="300" height="338" /> <h2>EuropeanaR - a Shiny app sprint example</h2> At its core, the Shiny app consists of 3 primary components - a search engine, a map, and an infographic. The primary goal of the application is to visualize the spread of artworks over Europe. To do this, Appsilon R/Shiny developers Ivan Hrychaniuk and André Veríssimo created a search engine for European artists. They added a map for the spatial component and a pop-up to visualize the artwork associated with a user's search. To learn more, check out Europeana(R) creator André, as he guides us through the procedure and a demonstration of the application. <iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/h-U_d7ajkw0" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe> <blockquote>App sprints can be a challenge with distributed teams. Learn how we <a href="https://appsilon.com/appsprints-r-shiny-app-development/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">manage app sprints to develop unique R Shiny apps</a>.</blockquote>