# Digital Public Library of America

**Canonical:** https://apis.io/providers/dpla/  
**Website:** https://dp.la/  
**APIs profiled:** 5

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.

## Kin Score — 37.7 / 100 (thin)

Scored 2026-08-21 under rubric 0.12.0. Trend: flat (+0.0 from 37.7).

| Facet | Score |
|---|---|
| Discoverability | 74.1 |
| Contract Quality | 64.2 |
| Governance | 0.0 |
| Contract Governance | 0.0 |
| Operational Transparency | 2.6 |
| Developer Ergonomics | 33.3 |
| Commercial Clarity | 28.9 |
| Access Clarity | 28.9 |

Regulatory layer — **Government & Public Sector**: 31.5 (matched via tags).

## Agent readiness — 41.9 (agent-ready)

| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Spec Presence | yes |
| Agentic Access | derived |
| Reversibility Documented | no |
| MCP Server | no |
| Auth Clarity | yes |
| Idempotency | no |
| Error Semantics | verified |
| OpenAPI Examples | verified |
| 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 · Self-serve signup — onboarding: self-serve, pricing: free, trial: no (confidence: high).

## APIs (5)

- **DPLA API Key Registration** — 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 i...
- **Digital Public Library of America Authentication API** — API key registration and management
- **Digital Public Library of America Items API** — Search and retrieve cultural heritage item metadata records
- **Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets API** — Search and retrieve primary source sets (PSS) for education
- **Digital Public Library of America Utilities API** — Utility endpoints for health checks and random item retrieval

## Agentic access (1)

- **Dpla Agentic Access** — 8 operations · 1 acting

## Security (2)

- **Dpla Authentication** — apiKey · 2 schemes
- **Dpla Domain Security** — TLSv1.3 · DMARC

## Plans (1)

- **Plans**

## Tags

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

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