University of Chicago Library Catalog API (VuFind)

aid: university-of-chicago:vufind-catalog-api
name: University of Chicago Library Catalog API (VuFind)
description: The Library's discovery layer is VuFind, self-hosted at catalog.lib.uchicago.edu and forked
  in the institution's own GitHub organization (uchicago-library/vufind). VuFind ships a REST search API
  at /vufind/api/v1; on this deployment it is present but switched off — a search request returns HTTP
  403 with {"status":"ERROR","statusMessage":"Permission denied"}. Recorded because the surface is real,
  institution-operated, and deliberately gated rather than absent; it is NOT counted as a consumable API.
humanURL: https://catalog.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/
baseURL: https://catalog.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/api/v1
x-operator: institution
x-operator-basis: Host catalog.lib.uchicago.edu is under the institution's own registrable domain uchicago.edu;
  the VuFind fork is published under github.com/uchicago-library.
x-verified: '2026-08-19'
x-availability: gated
tags:
- Library Catalog
- VuFind
- Discovery
- Gated
properties:
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://catalog.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/uchicago-library/vufind