Yale University IIIF API

openapi: 3.2.0
info:
  title: Yale University Library Digital Collections IIIF API
  description: 'Public IIIF Presentation 3.0 surface of Yale University Library''s Digital Collections (https://collections.library.yale.edu). The service is institution-operated: the host resolves to an AWS load balancer in Yale''s own account (alb-yul-dc-prod), and the software stack is Yale-authored and openly published by the yalelibrary GitHub organization (yul-dc-blacklight, yul-dc-management, yul-dc-iiif-imageserver, yul-dc-camerata).

    Only the manifest endpoint was verified callable. Yale''s robots.txt explicitly disallows crawler traffic to /manifests/, and the Blacklight JSON surface (/catalog.json, /catalog/{oid}.json) answers automated requests with an empty HTTP 202 edge challenge rather than JSON, so it is recorded as gated rather than described here.'
  version: '3.0'
  contact:
    name: Yale University Library — Digital Collections
    url: https://collections.library.yale.edu/
servers:
- url: https://collections.library.yale.edu
  description: Yale University Library Digital Collections production (institution-operated)
tags:
- name: IIIF
  description: IIIF Presentation 3.0 manifests for digitized objects
paths:
  /manifests/{oid}:
    get:
      tags:
      - IIIF
      operationId: getManifest
      summary: Retrieve the IIIF Presentation 3.0 manifest for an object
      description: Returns a IIIF Presentation 3.0 Manifest describing a digitized object — its canvases, image services, structural ranges and descriptive metadata. Verified 200 on 2026-08-19 for oid 2055095. Note that https://collections.library.yale.edu/robots.txt disallows /manifests/ for all user agents; this endpoint is public but not intended for crawling.
      parameters:
      - name: oid
        in: path
        required: true
        description: Yale Digital Collections object identifier (numeric OID).
        schema:
          type: string
        example: '2055095'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: IIIF Presentation 3.0 Manifest.
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/IIIFManifest'
        '404':
          description: No object with that identifier. Returned as an HTML body ("We're sorry, but the item you've requested does not appear to exist"), not JSON.
          content:
            text/html:
              schema:
                type: string
components:
  schemas:
    Canvas:
      type: object
      required:
      - id
      - type
      properties:
        id:
          type: string
          format: uri
        type:
          type: string
          enum:
          - Canvas
        label:
          $ref: '#/components/schemas/LanguageMap'
        height:
          type: integer
        width:
          type: integer
        items:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
    IIIFManifest:
      type: object
      description: A IIIF Presentation 3.0 Manifest. Yale's manifests additionally declare the IIIF Content Search 1 and navPlace extension contexts.
      required:
      - '@context'
      - id
      - type
      properties:
        '@context':
          oneOf:
          - type: string
            format: uri
          - type: array
            items:
              type: string
              format: uri
        id:
          type: string
          format: uri
        type:
          type: string
          enum:
          - Manifest
        label:
          $ref: '#/components/schemas/LanguageMap'
        summary:
          $ref: '#/components/schemas/LanguageMap'
        metadata:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            properties:
              label:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/LanguageMap'
              value:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/LanguageMap'
        requiredStatement:
          type: object
          additionalProperties: true
        rights:
          type: string
          format: uri
        provider:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
        items:
          type: array
          description: Canvases making up the object.
          items:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Canvas'
        structures:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
        service:
          type: array
          description: Associated services, including IIIF Content Search.
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
    LanguageMap:
      type: object
      description: IIIF language map — BCP 47 language tag (or "none") to an array of strings.
      additionalProperties:
        type: array
        items:
          type: string
externalDocs:
  description: IIIF Presentation API 3.0 specification
  url: https://iiif.io/api/presentation/3.0/