# Brown University

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/brown/  
**Website:** https://www.brown.edu  
**APIs profiled:** 3

Brown University is a private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, ranked #57 in the QS World University Rankings 2025. Its public developer and API footprint is centered on the Brown University Library, which operates the Brown Digital Repository (BDR) with a documented public REST/search API and a IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) image and presentation service. Brown also runs an InCommon-federated Shibboleth/SAML single sign-on identity service and maintains an active "Brown University Library" GitHub organization with hundreds of open-source repositories. Most institutional systems (SIS, course catalog, internal services) are gated behind Brown authentication and are not publicly documented APIs.

## Kin Score — 24.3 / 100 (emerging)

Scored 2026-08-20 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 24.3).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 74.1 |
| Contract Quality | 11.3 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 26.3 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 21.4 |
| Commercial Clarity | 28.9 |
| Access Clarity | 28.9 |

Regulatory layer — **Education & Research**: 31.5 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 11.5 (agent-aware)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | no |
| Agentic Access | no |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | no |
| OpenAPI Examples | no |
| Rate Limit Signal | documented |
| Event Surface Described | no |
| Agent Skills | no |
| Well Known Catalog | no |
| Consent Identity | no |
| Agent Card | no |
| Dry Run Mode | no |

## Access

Free — onboarding: unknown, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: medium).

## APIs (3)

- **Brown Digital Repository (BDR) API** — Public REST/search API for the Brown Digital Repository, the library's platform for gathering, indexing, storing, preserving, and making available digital assets from scholarly,...
- **Brown Digital Repository IIIF Service** — IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) image and presentation service exposing IIIF manifests for objects in the Brown Digital Repository. Brown is listed as a II...
- **Brown Shibboleth Single Sign-On (SAML)** — Brown's InCommon-federated Shibboleth identity provider implementing the OASIS SAML 2.0 standard for web single sign-on across Brown web services. Used for authentication/attrib...

## Security (1)

- **Brown Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

## Plans (1)

- **Brown Plans Pricing**

## Tags

Education, Higher Education, University, Research, Library, Digital Repository, IIIF, United States

---

Profiled by [API Evangelist](https://apievangelist.com) and published on [APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/brown/). Scores are computed from the provider's own public artifacts under a published rubric.