Loading Atlas and preparing the image network

Connections

sources Atlas may look at
look outside · rank against yours · one door writes
Connectionsproposes

A connection widens what Atlas can look at. It does not widen what Atlas can write. Anything found outside stays a candidate — fingerprinted, ranked against your own archive, shown on the field — until you accept it, and acceptance is the same door every folder proposal already goes through.

discoverrank against yoursproposeyou accept
nothing connectedruns locally · never on the hosted archive
What each row tells you

Connecting a source answers three separate questions, and a source can answer them differently. Data is whether Atlas can read the record. Images is whether it can fetch the actual file to fingerprint and catalogue. Keep is whether the licence lets that file live in your archive. A full circle means yes, a half circle means it depends on the record, an empty one means no.

A
Are.nadev.are.na
no keyoff

Channels of design reference and ephemera — the closest thing on this list to the material this archive already collects, which makes it the fairest test of similarity ranking.

Datatitles, descriptions and channel context, unauthenticated
Imagesmany blocks are LINKS to third-party servers, not hosted files — fetching those is a request to someone else's host
Keepno blanket grant; rights follow whatever the original source was
R
Rijksmuseumrijksmuseum.nl
needs keyoff

The cleanest licence on this page by a distance: object descriptions are CC0 and the images are public domain, so what you fetch is unambiguously yours to keep.

DataCC0 object descriptions
Imagespublic-domain images, downloadable
Keepfree of rights — copy, change, distribute, export without permission
ATLAS_RIJKS_KEY
M
The Metcollectionapi.metmuseum.org
no keyoff

The largest open catalogue here. Strong provenance, but the material sits a long way from posters and editorial — expect low similarity scores and do not read that as the ranking failing.

Data502,398 object records, no registration
Images~368k of 502k records carry an image at all
KeepCC0 covers the metadata dataset and the public-domain image subset, not the catalogue
C
Art Institute of Chicagoapi.artic.edu
no keyoff

A better editorial and graphic-design fit than most museums, but the tightest anonymous ceiling of the three — their own guidance is to prefer the nightly data dumps over crawling.

Data132,681 artworks, no key
ImagesIIIF image service
Keep62,046 of 132,681 artworks are public domain — 47%
L
Cleveland Museum of Artopenaccess-api.clevelandart.org
no keyoff

The only source here that tells you per record whether the image is yours to keep. That makes it the right one to build the licence-handling code against, even though its material is a weaker fit than Are.na.

Data68,777 records, no key
Imagesdirect image URLs on CC0 records
Keep41,507 records ship a CC0 image; ~26k are metadata only — filter cc0=1 and has_image=1
E
Europeanaapi.europeana.eu
needs keyoff

An aggregator across European institutions rather than one collection, which is its strength and its complication: rights are set by each contributing institution, so they vary record by record.

Dataaggregated across thousands of institutions
Imagesthe aggregator links to the providing institution; availability varies
Keeprights statements differ per record — must be read per item, never assumed
ATLAS_EUROPEANA_KEY
Cosmoscosmos.so
not availableunavailable

Exactly the material this archive wants, and the reason it keeps coming up. There is no public API; an unofficial MCP server reaches the site's private endpoint, and the terms forbid it.

Datareachable in practice, permitted by nobody
Imagesno licence grant of any kind
Keepthe terms forbid automated access by any tool that is not a browser, signed in or not
P
Pinterestdevelopers.pinterest.com
not availableunavailable

Not what people assume. The API manages pins and boards you already own; it does not search Pinterest, which is the thing anyone actually wants from it.

Datayour own boards only, behind per-user OAuth
Imagesno redistribution grant
Keepnothing here may be kept in an archive