Brown University Discovery API

openapi: 3.2.0
info:
  title: Brown Digital Repository (BDR) Discovery API
  version: '2026-08-30'
  summary: Public, keyless read API over the Brown University Library's digital repository.
  description: 'The Brown Digital Repository (BDR) is the Brown University Library''s platform for gathering,

    indexing, storing, preserving and making available digital assets produced by scholarly,

    instructional, research and administrative activity at Brown.'
  contact:
    name: Brown University Library
    url: https://library.brown.edu
  termsOfService: https://policy.brown.edu/policy/privacy
  license:
    name: Rights vary per repository object; see each object's MODS metadata
    url: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-basis: Host is under brown.edu, Brown's own registrable domain. The repository application is authored and maintained by the Brown University Library (public source in https://github.com/Brown-University-Library — bdr_indexer, bdrxml, bdr_uploader_hub_project, bdr-api-tools), the API documentation is written by Brown Library staff in Brown's own GitHub wiki, and DataCite lists the repository as Brown's registered client BROWN.BDR. No vendor platform identity appears in servers[], info.title or info.contact.
  x-provenance:
    generated: '2026-08-30'
    method: derived
    source:
    - https://github.com/Brown-University-Library/bdr_api_documentation/wiki
    - https://repository.library.brown.edu/api/
    - https://repository.library.brown.edu/api/search/?q=primary_title:irish&rows=2&fl=pid,primary_title,abstract
    - https://repository.library.brown.edu/api/items/bdr:80246/
    - https://repository.library.brown.edu/api/collections/
    - https://api.datacite.org/clients/brown.bdr
    note: Derived from Brown's own prose documentation plus live probing on 2026-08-30. Not published by Brown as a specification. Do not present this document as a Brown-authored contract.
servers:
- url: https://repository.library.brown.edu
  description: Brown Digital Repository production
security: []
tags:
- name: Discovery
  description: The API root link index.
paths:
  /api/:
    get:
      tags:
      - Discovery
      operationId: getApiRoot
      summary: API root link index
      description: Returns a two-key object linking to the collection API and to the human documentation page. It is a link index, not a service description; the BDR publishes no machine-readable contract of its own.
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Link index
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/ApiRoot'
              example:
                collections: https://repository.library.brown.edu/api/collections/
                api docs: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/api-docs/
        '500':
          description: Internal server error, per Brown's documented global exception behaviour.
components:
  schemas:
    ApiRoot:
      type: object
      description: The `/api/` link index.
      properties:
        collections:
          type: string
          format: uri
        api docs:
          type: string
          format: uri
x-access:
  authentication: none
  description: Every documented BDR API endpoint is anonymous and keyless. There is no API key, no OAuth flow and no registration step. The boundary is not authentication but VISIBILITY — the index exposes `_display_public_bsi`, `_display_brown_bsi` and `_display_private_bsi`, and the anonymous API sees only public objects. Brown-affiliated access to the wider set goes through the Shibboleth login the `links.login` key on every search response points at.
x-throttling:
  observed_headers: none
  description: 'No rate-limit headers were returned on any probe. Brown documents in its own API wiki that Cloudflare bot protection was added in Spring 2025 and may affect API users requesting a large volume of items at a high rate, and advises Brown community members to use the VPN to reduce the impact. The repository''s robots.txt sets `Crawl-delay: 30`. The 500-row response cap is the only hard, observable limit.'