Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides a free REST API that gives access to metadata for 50 million+ cultural heritage items aggregated from 4,000+ US libraries, archives, and museums. The API supports full-text search, field-specific queries, geographic and date range filtering, faceted browsing, and JSONP callbacks. All results are returned as JSON-LD. API keys are issued free of charge via a self-service email-based registration endpoint. DPLA aggregates contributions from cultural heritage institutions across the United States and makes the combined metadata freely available to researchers, developers, and the public.

Digital Public Library of America publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network, including Authentication API, Items API, Primary Source Sets API, and 1 more. Tagged areas include Cultural Heritage, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Open Data.

The Digital Public Library of America catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context.

Digital Public Library of America’s developer surface includes authentication, documentation, engineering blog, and 13 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

37.7/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 42/100 agent ready Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-21 · rubric v0.12.0

AccessFreeSelf serve⚡ Free to try

5 APIs

Cultural Heritage Libraries Archives Museums Open Data Metadata Digital Collections Public Domain

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-21 · rubric v0.12.0

Composite quality — 37.7/100 · thin

Contract Quality 13.6 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 5.7 / 17

Access Clarity 4.9 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.3 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 6.3 / 9

Regulatory Posture 4.7 / 15

Agent readiness — 42/100 · agent ready

Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 10 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8

Request/Response Examples 7 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Government & Public Sector regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/dpla: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 5

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Rate Limits

0 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal

DeveloperPortal

Documentation 1

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation

Documentation

Agent Surfaces 1

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

AgenticAccess

AgenticAccess

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLDContext

JSONLDContext

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Authentication

Authentication

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

License

License

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 4

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Blog

Blog

LinkedIn

Twitter

Twitter

Source (apis.yml)

aid: dpla
name: Digital Public Library of America
description: The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides a free REST API that gives access to metadata for 50 million+
  cultural heritage items aggregated from 4,000+ US libraries, archives, and museums. The API supports full-text search, field-specific
  queries, geographic and date range filtering, faceted browsing, and JSONP callbacks. All results are returned as JSON-LD.
  API keys are issued free of charge via a self-service email-based registration endpoint. DPLA aggregates contributions from
  cultural heritage institutions across the United States and makes the combined metadata freely available to researchers,
  developers, and the public.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: self-serve
  trial: false
  try_now: true
  public: false
  label: Free · Self-serve signup
  confidence: high
  source:
  - plans
  - authentication
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
position: Provider
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/dpla.png
tags:
- Cultural Heritage
- Libraries
- Archives
- Museums
- Open Data
- Metadata
- Digital Collections
- Public Domain
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: dpla:api-key-registration
  name: DPLA API Key Registration
  description: Self-service API key registration endpoint that issues free access keys via email. Developers submit their
    email address via HTTP POST and receive an API key by email. The key is then passed as the api_key query parameter or
    Authorization header on all subsequent Items API requests.
  humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
  tags:
  - Authentication
  - APIKeys
  - Registration
  tags_raw:
  - Authentication
  - API Keys
  - Registration
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
- aid: dpla:dpla-authentication-api
  name: Digital Public Library of America Authentication API
  description: API key registration and management
  humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
  tags:
  - Authentication
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/dpla-authentication-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/dpla/api
- aid: dpla:dpla-items-api
  name: Digital Public Library of America Items API
  description: Search and retrieve cultural heritage item metadata records
  humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
  tags:
  - Item
  tags_raw:
  - Items
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/dpla-items-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/dpla/api
- aid: dpla:dpla-primary-source-sets-api
  name: Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets API
  description: Search and retrieve primary source sets (PSS) for education
  humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
  tags:
  - Primary Source Sets
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/dpla-primary-source-sets-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/dpla/api
- aid: dpla:dpla-utilities-api
  name: Digital Public Library of America Utilities API
  description: Utility endpoints for health checks and random item retrieval
  humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
  tags:
  - Utilities
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/dpla-utilities-api-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: Authentication
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/dpla/api
common:
- type: License
  name: MIT
  url: https://github.com/dpla/api/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: AgenticAccess
  url: agentic-access/dpla-agentic-access.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/dpla-domain-security.yml
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/dpla-authentication.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://dp.la/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://pro.dp.la/developers
- type: Documentation
  url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/dpla
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/dpla/api
- type: Blog
  url: https://dp.la/news
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-public-library-of-america
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/dpla
- type: RateLimits
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
- type: Plans
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
- type: JSONLDContext
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/json-ld/context.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Work with this as data

Every provider here is available over the APIs.io API and to AI agents over MCP.

MCP server

One button, every client — Claude, Cursor, VS Code and the rest.

https://apis.io/mcp

Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

All 92 tools

Call it yourself

curl for this page

This provider

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/dpla"

All providers

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers?limit=25"

Every operation they expose

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/dpla/operations?limit=25"

How their score was established

curl "https://apis.io/api/v1/providers/dpla/evidence"

Discovery needs no key. Ratings and market analysis are Pro.

Get an API key

Free tier, no email required.

GitHub Google LinkedIn

A second provider on the same verified email joins the account you already have.