Harvard University website screenshot

Harvard University

Harvard University (Cambridge, MA; founded 1636; QS World 2025 #4) maintains a substantial public developer footprint spread across several units. Its most prominent fully public, key-based APIs are the Harvard Art Museums API and the Harvard Library LibraryCloud / Open Metadata API, both serving open collections data. Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT) operates a central API Portal (HarvardKey-gated) cataloging administrative APIs (Courses, Person, Dining, Zoom, Library Catalog), and the DASH institutional repository exposes an open OAI-PMH metadata feed.

Harvard University publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Education, Higher Education, University, Research, and Libraries.

The Harvard University catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context.

Harvard University’s developer surface includes GitHub presence, status page, and 10 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
20.6/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6
AccessFree
4 APIs
EducationHigher EducationUniversityResearchLibrariesMuseumsOpen MetadataOAI-PMH

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-28 · rubric v0.6
Composite quality — 20.6/100 · emerging
Contract Quality 3.2 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 1.7 / 20
Commercial Clarity 5.8 / 20
Operational Transparency 3.4 / 13
Governance 0.0 / 12
Discoverability 6.5 / 10
Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 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
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/harvard: 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 4

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

Harvard Art Museums API

REST/JSON API to the Harvard Art Museums' collections data across 21 resources (Object, Person, Exhibition, Publication, Gallery, Classification, Culture, Medium, Period, Place,...

Harvard Library LibraryCloud API (Open Metadata)

Open metadata hub aggregating Harvard bibliographic metadata (12.7M+ bib records, image records, ArchivesSpace finding aids). The public Item API returns normalized MODS or Dubl...

Harvard DASH OAI-PMH

OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard), the open-access institutional repository of 58,000+ scholarly works. Open, no key r...

Harvard API Portal (HUIT)

HUIT's central catalog of administrative APIs — Courses, Person Data Service, Library Catalog (Ex Libris Primo), Dining, HR Departments, Zoom, Emailer, and Generative AI APIs. O...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Harvard Plans Pricing

2 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Harvard Rate Limits

1 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

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

Harvard Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Harvard Context

33 classes · 3 properties

JSON-LD

Security Posture 2

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Harvard Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Harvard Vulnerability Disclosure

disclosure policy published

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

DeveloperPortal
DeveloperPortal

Build 1

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub
GitHub

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

VulnerabilityDisclosure
VulnerabilityDisclosure
 DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Operate 2

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

Status
Status
 RateLimits
RateLimits

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans
Plans
 FinOps
FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website
Website
 Twitter
Twitter
 LinkedIn
LinkedIn

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

Review
Review

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: harvard
name: Harvard University
description: 'Harvard University (Cambridge, MA; founded 1636; QS World 2025 #4) maintains a substantial public developer
  footprint spread across several units. Its most prominent fully public, key-based APIs are the Harvard Art Museums API and
  the Harvard Library LibraryCloud / Open Metadata API, both serving open collections data. Harvard University Information
  Technology (HUIT) operates a central API Portal (HarvardKey-gated) cataloging administrative APIs (Courses, Person, Dining,
  Zoom, Library Catalog), and the DASH institutional repository exposes an open OAI-PMH metadata feed.'
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: free
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Free
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/harvard.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/harvard/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Research
- Libraries
- Museums
- Open Metadata
- OAI-PMH
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: harvard:art-museums
  name: Harvard Art Museums API
  description: REST/JSON API to the Harvard Art Museums' collections data across 21 resources (Object, Person, Exhibition,
    Publication, Gallery, Classification, Culture, Medium, Period, Place, Image, and more), with pagination, aggregations,
    and IIIF image services. Free for non-commercial use; requires an API key.
  humanURL: https://github.com/harvardartmuseums/api-docs
  baseURL: https://api.harvardartmuseums.org
  tags:
  - Museums
  - Art
  - Collections
  - Cultural Heritage
  - IIIF
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://github.com/harvardartmuseums/api-docs
  - type: Signup
    url: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/api
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/harvardartmuseums
- aid: harvard:librarycloud
  name: Harvard Library LibraryCloud API (Open Metadata)
  description: Open metadata hub aggregating Harvard bibliographic metadata (12.7M+ bib records, image records, ArchivesSpace
    finding aids). The public Item API returns normalized MODS or Dublin Core; a Collections API is also available. No API
    key required for the public Item API.
  humanURL: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-library-apis-datasets
  baseURL: https://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items.json
  tags:
  - Libraries
  - Open Metadata
  - Bibliographic
  - MODS
  - Dublin Core
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-library-apis-datasets
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/harvard-library/librarycloud
- aid: harvard:dash
  name: Harvard DASH OAI-PMH
  description: OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard), the open-access
    institutional repository of 58,000+ scholarly works. Open, no key required.
  humanURL: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/dash
  baseURL: https://dash.harvard.edu/server/oai/request
  tags:
  - Repository
  - Open Access
  - OAI-PMH
  - Scholarship
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/dash
  - type: Website
    url: https://dash.harvard.edu/home
- aid: harvard:api-portal
  name: Harvard API Portal (HUIT)
  description: HUIT's central catalog of administrative APIs — Courses, Person Data Service, Library Catalog (Ex Libris Primo),
    Dining, HR Departments, Zoom, Emailer, and Generative AI APIs. OpenAPI specs are viewable in the portal; base URLs are
    gated behind HarvardKey login, app registration, and per-API access grant.
  humanURL: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
  tags:
  - Courses
  - Identity
  - Administrative
  - OpenAPI
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
  - type: Signup
    url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/
  - type: DeveloperPortal
    url: https://data.harvard.edu/apis
common:
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/harvard-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/harvard-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://data.harvard.edu/developers
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/harvard
- type: Status
  url: https://status.huit.harvard.edu/
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/Harvard
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/harvard-university/
- type: Plans
  url: plans/harvard-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/harvard-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/harvard-finops.yml
- type: Review
  url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com