Harvard University

aid: harvard
name: Harvard University
description: 'Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts; founded 1636; private, Ivy League) is one of the few institutions
  in this cohort with a genuinely institution-operated programmable footprint rather than a borrowed one. Five surfaces are
  Harvard''s own: the Harvard Dataverse research data repository, which runs on Harvard''s own infrastructure and whose Dataverse
  software is written by Harvard''s Institute for Quantitative Social Science and serves a live 450-path OpenAPI; the Harvard
  Library LibraryCloud open metadata API, unauthenticated over 12M+ bibliographic records; the Harvard Art Museums collections
  API; a Shibboleth identity provider registered in the InCommon federation with REFEDS SIRTFI assurance; and two Harvard
  Law School Library Innovation Lab surfaces, the Caselaw Access Project static bulk data and a 2026 OpenAPI 3.1 agent-skills
  hub. Alongside them sit five vendor tenancies that are just as real and are recorded as such rather than credited to Harvard:
  DASH runs on 4Science''s managed DSpace behind a harvard.edu hostname, the HOLLIS catalog is an Ex Libris Primo VE instance,
  harvard.figshare.com is a Figshare tenancy, canvas.harvard.edu is an Instructure tenancy, and harvard.zoom.us is a Zoom
  tenancy. There is no unified developer program: the central HUIT API Portal exists but its catalog, its base URLs and its
  credentials all sit behind HarvardKey, and the whole harvard.edu Drupal estate answers automated clients with an Akamai
  403.'
type: Index
x-type: university
x-category: Private Research University
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:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- United States
- Ivy League
- Private Research University
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Open Metadata
- OAI-PMH
- Identity Federation
- Libraries
- Museums
- Course Catalog
- Research Computing
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-coverage:
  state: covered
  reason: partial_probe_block
  detail: 'Harvard was probed on 2026-08-19 and the profile is complete for every machine surface, but two blocks limited
    what could be read and both are about the fetcher, not about Harvard''s footprint. First, the entire harvard.edu Drupal
    estate sits behind Akamai and returns a bare "Access Denied" 403 to every non-browser client regardless of User-Agent
    or header set - data.harvard.edu, huit.harvard.edu, provost.harvard.edu, scholar.harvard.edu, accessibility.harvard.edu
    and ai.harvard.edu all behave identically. These sites are live to a human browser, so the two data.harvard.edu developer
    pointers the June 2026 profile carried were NOT removed as dead; they were dropped because their content could not be
    read and therefore could not be honestly typed. Second, and more interestingly, the two research repositories invert the
    usual pattern: dash.harvard.edu and dataverse.harvard.edu serve a "Human Verification" challenge (405 and 202) on their
    HTML surfaces while their API and OAI-PMH paths return 200 to anonymous machine clients. Harvard blocks agents at the
    front door and lets them in at the side door. Everything else resolved: the HUIT API Portal is gated behind HarvardKey
    by design (its catalog paths return an Angular shell to anonymous callers), and api.perma.cc is behind a Cloudflare interstitial,
    so both are recorded as surfaces with the gate named rather than guessed at.'
  evidence:
  - url: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/openapi
    status: 200
  - url: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api/info/version
    status: 200
  - url: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/oai?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
    status: 202
    note: Human Verification challenge page on the HTML surface while the API is open.
  - url: https://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items.json?title=chess&limit=1
    status: 200
  - url: https://api.harvardartmuseums.org/object?size=1
    status: 401
  - url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Ffed.huit.harvard.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
    status: 200
  - url: https://harvard-lil.github.io/lawskills-hub/actions/openapi.yaml
    status: 200
  - url: https://dash.harvard.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
    status: 200
  - url: https://dash.harvard.edu/
    status: 405
    note: Human Verification challenge on the HTML surface of the DASH repository.
  - url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
    status: 200
    note: Angular shell; catalog data paths return the same shell or 404 without HarvardKey.
  - url: https://data.harvard.edu/
    status: 403
    note: Akamai Access Denied. Live to a browser, unreadable to any automated client.
  - url: https://api.perma.cc/v1/public/archives/?limit=1
    status: 403
    note: Cloudflare interstitial. Surface is live; contents were not readable.
  - url: https://static.case.law/
    status: 200
apis:
- aid: harvard:dataverse
  name: Harvard Dataverse API
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'Native REST API of Harvard Dataverse, the institution''s research data repository, running Dataverse 6.10.1
    (build iqss-4) on Harvard''s own AWS infrastructure with no vendor CNAME. Public read operations - search, dataset and
    file metadata, access to published data - are anonymous; deposit and administration take an X-Dataverse-key token. Harvard
    serves a live OpenAPI 3.0.3 document at /openapi covering 450 paths and 574 operations. IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTION NOTE: that
    contract is the Dataverse software''s generic contract, shared with every other Dataverse installation - but Dataverse
    is written by Harvard''s own Institute for Quantitative Social Science (github.com/IQSS/dataverse), so unlike every Figshare
    or Pure contract in this cohort, crediting Harvard here credits Harvard''s own engineering. Datasets are minted under
    DOI prefix 10.7910, registered to DataCite provider harvardu.'
  humanURL: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
  baseURL: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/api
  tags:
  - Research Data
  - Research Repository
  - Dataverse
  - Open Data
  - DataCite
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/harvard-dataverse-openapi.yml
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/latest/api/native-api.html
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-dataverse-search-response.json
- aid: harvard:dataverse-oai
  name: Harvard Dataverse OAI-PMH
  x-operator: institution
  description: OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for Harvard Dataverse. Identify returns repositoryName "Harvard Dataverse
    Dataverse OAI Archive" with adminEmail support@dataverse.harvard.edu, earliest datestamp 2017-09-25, gzip and deflate
    compression. Open, no key. This is the endpoint that earns Harvard's oai-pmh domain standard hit under the Kin Score education
    regime.
  humanURL: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
  baseURL: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/oai
  tags:
  - OAI-PMH
  - Harvesting
  - Research Data
  - Open Metadata
  properties:
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-dataverse-oai-identify.xml
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/harvard-education-domain-standards.yml
- aid: harvard:librarycloud
  name: Harvard Library LibraryCloud API (Open Metadata)
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'Open metadata hub aggregating Harvard bibliographic metadata (12.7M+ bib records, image records, ArchivesSpace
    finding aids) and returning normalized MODS or Dublin Core. The public Item API needs no key and is served from Harvard''s
    own infrastructure (api.lib.harvard.edu -> api-prod.hz.lib.harvard.edu on AWS). Harvard publishes no machine-readable
    contract for it; a schema derived from a live response is stored under json-schema/. Note the defect recorded in errors/:
    a non-numeric limit parameter returns a Tomcat HTML 500 rather than a 400.'
  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
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/harvard-librarycloud-item.schema.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-librarycloud-item-response.json
- aid: harvard:art-museums
  name: Harvard Art Museums API
  x-operator: institution
  description: REST/JSON API to the Harvard Art Museums' collections across 25 documented resources (object, person, exhibition,
    publication, gallery, classification, culture, medium, period, place, image, iiif, spectrum and more), with pagination,
    aggregations and IIIF image services. Free key, non-commercial use. Built and run by the museums themselves - the host
    is their own application on Heroku, not a collections-platform vendor, and the code and docs live in the harvardartmuseums
    GitHub org. Documentation is 25 markdown files; there is no machine-readable contract, and the API root 301-redirects
    to the docs repo.
  humanURL: https://github.com/harvardartmuseums/api-docs
  baseURL: https://api.harvardartmuseums.org
  tags:
  - Museums
  - Art
  - Collection
  - Cultural Heritage
  - IIIF
  tags_raw:
  - 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:identity-federation
  name: Harvard University Shibboleth Identity Provider (InCommon)
  x-operator: institution
  description: Harvard's SAML 2.0 identity provider, entityID https://fed.huit.harvard.edu/idp/shibboleth, registered in the
    InCommon federation and reachable as signed machine-readable metadata through the InCommon metadata query service. The
    entity carries REFEDS SIRTFI assurance certification and the REFEDS Research and Scholarship entity category; OrganizationName
    is "Harvard College" and mdui:DisplayName is "Harvard University". This is the authentication authority behind HarvardKey
    and therefore behind every gated Harvard API, and it is institution-operated by definition - a federation IdP cannot be
    outsourced without changing the entityID. Almost never catalogued for any institution; it is the most unambiguously Harvard-owned
    machine-readable artifact in this profile.
  humanURL: https://incommon.org/federation/
  baseURL: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Ffed.huit.harvard.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
  tags:
  - Identity Federation
  - Shibboleth
  - SAML
  - InCommon
  - Single Sign-On
  properties:
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-incommon-idp-metadata.xml
  - type: Conformance
    url: conformance/harvard-education-domain-standards.yml
- aid: harvard:lil-lawskills
  name: Legal Ed Skills Hub (Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab)
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'A 2026 agent-native surface from the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab: a static JSON API for progressively
    discovering and loading pedagogical AI skills for legal education, organized by persona (professor, student, pro-se, CLE,
    skill-developer). Ships a hand-written OpenAPI 3.1.0 document whose servers[] self-declares harvard-lil.github.io/lawskills-hub,
    so the surface identifies itself as the lab''s own. The only contract in this profile that Harvard both wrote and exclusively
    operates, and the only one designed for agent consumption from the start.'
  humanURL: https://harvard-lil.github.io/lawskills-hub/
  baseURL: https://harvard-lil.github.io/lawskills-hub
  tags:
  - Agent Skills
  - Legal Education
  - Artificial Intelligence
  - OpenAPI
  - Static API
  tags_raw:
  - Agent Skills
  - Legal Education
  - AI
  - OpenAPI
  - Static API
  properties:
  - type: OpenAPI
    url: openapi/harvard-lil-legal-ed-skills-hub-openapi.yml
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/harvard-lil/lawskills-hub
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/harvard-lil-lawskills-persona-index.schema.json
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-lil-lawskills-personas.json
- aid: harvard:caselaw-access-project
  name: Caselaw Access Project bulk data (Harvard Library Innovation Lab)
  x-operator: institution
  description: Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab's digitization of US case law, served as static bulk data organized
    by reporter. The live REST API at api.case.law was retired in 2024 and now 301-redirects to the project documentation;
    API operations were transferred to the Free Law Project's CourtListener while Harvard continues to serve the bulk data
    itself. Recorded partly because it is a genuine, executed, publicly documented API sunset - a rare thing anywhere and
    unique in this cohort.
  humanURL: https://case.law/
  baseURL: https://static.case.law/
  tags:
  - Legal
  - Open Data
  - Bulk Data
  - Case Law
  - Retired API
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://case.law/docs/
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/harvard-lil
  - type: Lifecycle
    url: lifecycle/harvard-lifecycle.yml
- aid: harvard:perma
  name: Perma.cc API (Harvard Library Innovation Lab)
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'Perma.cc is the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab''s link-rot service, creating permanent citable
    archives of web pages, and it exposes a public REST API at api.perma.cc. Ownership is confirmed - the codebase is github.com/harvard-lil/perma
    and the repo declares perma.cc as its homepage. HONEST LIMIT: every probe of api.perma.cc and perma.cc from this run hit
    a Cloudflare interstitial (403), so the surface is recorded as live-but-unreadable to us. No response shape, no auth scheme
    and no error contract was verified, and none is claimed here.'
  humanURL: https://perma.cc/
  baseURL: https://api.perma.cc/v1
  tags:
  - Web Archiving
  - Legal
  - Citation
  - Library
  properties:
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/harvard-lil/perma
- aid: harvard:api-portal
  name: Harvard API Portal (HUIT)
  x-operator: institution
  description: 'Harvard University Information Technology''s central catalog of administrative APIs - Courses, Person Data
    Service, Library Catalog, Dining, HR Departments, Zoom, Emailer and Generative AI. The portal software is a Google Apigee
    developer portal, but the APIs it fronts are Harvard-built and run on Harvard''s gateway, so the surface is institution,
    not tenant. It is however completely closed to an outside developer: the catalog itself, every base URL and every credential
    require HarvardKey login, application registration and a per-API access grant. Anonymous requests to the portal and to
    every catalog data path return a 2KB Angular shell, so not one administrative API contract could be read.'
  humanURL: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
  tags:
  - Courses
  - Identity
  - Administrative
  - Apigee
  - Gated
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
  - type: Signup
    url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/huit
- aid: harvard:dash
  name: Harvard DASH institutional repository (4Science-managed DSpace)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-tenant-of: 4Science
  description: 'DASH (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard) is Harvard''s open-access institutional repository of 58,000+
    scholarly works, exposing an open OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint and a DSpace 7 HAL REST API. TENANT, NOT INSTITUTION, and the DNS
    is what settles it: dash.harvard.edu is a CNAME to dash.lib.harvard.edu, which is a CNAME to harvard-dash.prod.4science.cloud,
    a 4Science-managed DSpace installation. This is the scholarbank.nus.edu.sg pattern - a hostname on the institution''s
    own domain that resolves onto a vendor platform. The content, the collections and the Harvard DASH repository identifier
    are genuinely Harvard''s; the REST contract is DSpace''s and the operations are 4Science''s. The relationship is recorded
    as a real institutional fact; no DSpace contract is saved under Harvard''s slug.'
  humanURL: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/dash
  baseURL: https://dash.harvard.edu/server/oai/request
  tags:
  - Research Repository
  - Open Access
  - OAI-PMH
  - DSpace
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/dash
  - type: Examples
    url: examples/harvard-dash-oai-identify.xml
- aid: harvard:hollis
  name: HOLLIS library discovery (Ex Libris Primo VE tenancy)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-tenant-of: Ex Libris (Clarivate)
  description: HOLLIS is Harvard Library's discovery layer. hollis.harvard.edu CNAMEs to hvd.primo.exlibrisgroup.com and redirects
    to /discovery/search?vid=01HVD_INST:HVD2, a standard Ex Libris Primo VE tenant instance. Harvard's collections, Ex Libris's
    contract. Recorded as the relationship it is; the Primo/Alma APIs belong in Ex Libris's own repo.
  humanURL: https://hollis.harvard.edu/
  tags:
  - Library
  - Discovery
  - Primo
  - Ex Libris
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://hollis.harvard.edu/
- aid: harvard:figshare
  name: Harvard Figshare tenancy
  x-operator: tenant
  x-tenant-of: Figshare (Digital Science)
  description: 'harvard.figshare.com is a Figshare institutional tenancy - the host CNAMEs directly to figshare.com. This
    is precisely the surface that produced the misattribution this pipeline exists to prevent: in the June 2026 cohort a single
    api.figshare.com contract was saved into 25 institutions'' repos and gave eight of them an identical agent-readiness of
    38.9. Harvard''s tenancy is recorded here as a relationship and nothing more. No Figshare contract is stored under this
    slug, and none should ever be re-added.'
  humanURL: https://harvard.figshare.com/
  tags:
  - Research Repository
  - Figshare
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://harvard.figshare.com/
- aid: harvard:canvas
  name: Canvas LMS tenancy (Instructure)
  x-operator: tenant
  x-tenant-of: Instructure
  description: canvas.harvard.edu CNAMEs to harvard-vanity.instructure.com. The Canvas REST API is live on that hostname and
    returns a well-formed JSON 401 to an anonymous caller, which makes it the best-behaved error contract answering on a harvard.edu
    name - and it is entirely Instructure's. Any LTI or Caliper conformance in this stack is the vendor's certification, which
    is why neither is credited to Harvard in conformance/.
  humanURL: https://canvas.harvard.edu/
  baseURL: https://canvas.harvard.edu/api/v1
  tags:
  - LMS
  - Canvas
  - Instructure
  - Teaching and Learning
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://canvas.harvard.edu/
- aid: harvard:zoom
  name: Zoom tenancy
  x-operator: tenant
  x-tenant-of: Zoom
  description: harvard.zoom.us is a Zoom institutional tenancy branded "Zoom for Harvard", and a Zoom API appears in the HUIT
    API Portal catalog. The account is Harvard's; the API is Zoom's. Recorded so the HUIT catalog listing is not later mistaken
    for a Harvard-built API.
  humanURL: https://harvard.zoom.us/
  tags:
  - Conferencing
  - Zoom
  - Tenant
  properties:
  - type: Website
    url: https://harvard.zoom.us/
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/
- type: About
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/about/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-library-apis-datasets
- type: APIReference
  url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/apis
- type: DeveloperPortal
  url: https://portal.apis.huit.harvard.edu/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/harvard
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/huit
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/harvard-lil
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/harvard-lts
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/harvard-library
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/harvardartmuseums
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/IQSS
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/
- type: ResearchRepository
  url: https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/dash
- type: LibraryCatalog
  url: https://hollis.harvard.edu/
- type: CourseCatalog
  url: https://courses.my.harvard.edu/
- type: IdentityFederation
  url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/https%3A%2F%2Ffed.huit.harvard.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth
- type: ResearchComputing
  url: https://rc.fas.harvard.edu/
- type: AIPolicy
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/ai/
- type: AITooling
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/ai/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/privacy-statement/
- type: Support
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/contact-harvard
- type: Status
  url: https://status.huit.harvard.edu/
- type: Blog
  url: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/
- type: Twitter
  url: https://twitter.com/Harvard
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/harvard-university/
- type: SecurityDisclosure
  url: https://www.harvard.edu/security-issue/
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/harvard-dataverse-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
  url: openapi/harvard-lil-legal-ed-skills-hub-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/harvard-librarycloud-item.schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/harvard-lil-lawskills-persona-index.schema.json
- type: Examples
  url: examples/README.yml
- type: Rules
  url: rules/harvard-governance-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
  url: vocabulary/harvard-vocabulary.yml
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/harvard-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
  url: authentication/harvard-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
  url: scopes/harvard-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
  url: errors/harvard-errors.yml
- type: Conformance
  url: conformance/harvard-education-domain-standards.yml
- type: Lifecycle
  url: lifecycle/harvard-lifecycle.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
  url: security/harvard-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/harvard-domain-security.yml
- 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