cprhw.tt | Collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Hello! You have discovered the Cooper Hewitt collections website URL shortener. This is what a short URL looks like:

http://cprhw.tt/ + PREFIX + / + SHORT CODE

Prefixes are short abbreviations scoping a URL to a particular part of the site, the same way things on the regular website are organized. Short codes are a base58 encoding of the prefix's unique ID. The advantage of this approach is that both the encoding and decoding of an ID can be performed using the magic of maths. Given a short URL for an object (or a person or an exhibition) you can figure out what its canonical URL is without having to ask us first and likewise for creating a shortened URL.

Here are the short URL prefixes that we support right now, along with examples:

/c is for countries Which means http://cprhw.tt/c/354nr/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/countries/23424775/
/d is for departments Which means http://cprhw.tt/d/48azx/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/departments/35347493/
/e is for exhibitions Which means http://cprhw.tt/e/48beX/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/exhibitions/35349721/
/o is for objects Which means http://cprhw.tt/o/2DS7P/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18704235/
/p is for people Which means http://cprhw.tt/p/2AvAi/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/people/18049849/
/pr is for periods Which means http://cprhw.tt/pr/48BHk/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/periods/35435409/
/r is for roles Which means http://cprhw.tt/r/47AB8/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/roles/35236573/
/t is for types Which means http://cprhw.tt/t/47ExX/ will redirect to http://collection.cooperhewitt.org/types/35249845/

Some brief technical notes: If all this looks strangely and suspiciously like what Flickr did with their URL shortener back in 2009 that's because it is basically a clone of their work. It's good work. URL shorteners are a tool and not a replacement for persistent and reliable URLs. That's why given a cprhw.tt short URL for an object (or a person or an exhibition) you can, with a little math, figure out its canonical collection.cooperhewitt.org URL is without having to ask us first. If you've never read Joshua Schachter's critique of URL shorteners you should. Not all of the arguments he made (also in 2009) necessarily apply in 2024 but it's still a good read.