The University of British Columbia is a public research university with campuses in Vancouver and Kelowna, British Columbia, and a member of Canada's U15 research group. Its programmable footprint is real but narrow, and almost all of it sits in UBC Library rather than in central IT. UBC Library operates the Open Collections API over the university's digitized archival and research collections, a IIIF Presentation endpoint over the same items, and the Abacus research-data repository — a Dataverse 5.9 deployment on UBC's own infrastructure that also serves a live OAI-PMH archive emitting DataCite kernel-4 and DDI Codebook metadata. Central IT publishes exactly one machine-readable artifact to the open internet: the SAML metadata for UBC's own Shibboleth identity provider at authentication.ubc.ca. Everything else the Office of the CIO runs is deliberately closed — the Integration Enablement Centre's MuleSoft gateway answers at api.ubc.ca with a flat 403, its API catalogue sits behind UBC's Confluence login, and entitlement is granted per-API through a Data Access Framework request rather than a developer portal. There is no public course, timetable or registrar API; course planning moved into Workday and the community projects that fill the gap are student-built and not endorsed by the university. UBC has no central developer portal, no API changelog and no deprecation policy, and every ubc.ca host sits behind a bot defence that answers automated clients with an HTML block page carrying HTTP 200.
University of British Columbia publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: UBC Library Abacus Dataverse API and Collections API. Tagged areas include Education, Higher Education, University, Public Research University, and Canada.
The University of British Columbia catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.
University of British Columbia’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, engineering blog, status page, support, authentication, and 25 more developer resources.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Education & Research 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.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it
carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts
themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already
holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in
front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created.
Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet,
not penalised by it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% 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/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/ubc: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts.
Submit an artifact on GitHub — free →Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →
IIIF Presentation manifests for Open Collections items, served from UBC Library's own host. Verified live 2026-08-19: a 10,560-byte JSON manifest returned for an item in the UBC...
The REST API of Abacus, UBC Library's research-data repository, running Dataverse 5.9 on UBC's own infrastructure at abacus.library.ubc.ca. UBC operates the deployment and the d...
A working OAI-PMH 2.0 archive on UBC Library's own host. Verified live 2026-08-19: verb=Identify returns repositoryName "Abacus Data Network Dataverse OAI Archive", adminEmail a...
UBC's own SAML 2.0 identity provider metadata, entityID https://authentication.ubc.ca, asserting the ubc.ca scope. Institution-operated by definition — no vendor can publish thi...
UBC's enterprise API gateway, run by the Office of the CIO's Integration Enablement Centre against the University Data Model. The host is real and answers — api.ubc.ca returns a...
Machine-readable service status for UBC IT at status.it.ubc.ca, on UBC's own hostname but CNAMEd to stspg-customer.com — UBC's tenant of Atlassian Statuspage. The status data is...
aid: ubc
name: University of British Columbia
description: 'The University of British Columbia is a public research university with campuses in Vancouver and Kelowna, British
Columbia, and a member of Canada''s U15 research group. Its programmable footprint is real but narrow, and almost all of
it sits in UBC Library rather than in central IT. UBC Library operates the Open Collections API over the university''s digitized
archival and research collections, a IIIF Presentation endpoint over the same items, and the Abacus research-data repository
— a Dataverse 5.9 deployment on UBC''s own infrastructure that also serves a live OAI-PMH archive emitting DataCite kernel-4
and DDI Codebook metadata. Central IT publishes exactly one machine-readable artifact to the open internet: the SAML metadata
for UBC''s own Shibboleth identity provider at authentication.ubc.ca. Everything else the Office of the CIO runs is deliberately
closed — the Integration Enablement Centre''s MuleSoft gateway answers at api.ubc.ca with a flat 403, its API catalogue
sits behind UBC''s Confluence login, and entitlement is granted per-API through a Data Access Framework request rather than
a developer portal. There is no public course, timetable or registrar API; course planning moved into Workday and the community
projects that fill the gap are student-built and not endorsed by the university. UBC has no central developer portal, no
API changelog and no deprecation policy, and every ubc.ca host sits behind a bot defence that answers automated clients
with an HTML block page carrying HTTP 200.'
type: Index
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: false
commercial: true
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: high
source:
- openapi
- pricing
generated: '2026-08-28'
method: derived
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: request
trial: false
try_now: false
public: partial
label: Free
confidence: high
source:
- plans
- authentication
generated: '2026-08-19'
method: probed
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/ubc.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/ubc/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Public Research University
- Canada
- British Columbia
- U15
- Library
- Digital Collections
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Open Data
- Identity Federation
- OAI-PMH
- IIIF
- Dataverse
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-19'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: ubc:open-collections-iiif
name: UBC Library Open Collections IIIF Presentation API
x-operator: institution
description: 'IIIF Presentation manifests for Open Collections items, served from UBC Library''s own host. Verified live
2026-08-19: a 10,560-byte JSON manifest returned for an item in the UBC Archives Photograph Collection, with IRI-annotated
Dublin Core, EDM and DPLA metadata. UBC publishes no OpenAPI for this surface and none is invented here — the contract
is the IIIF Presentation specification itself.'
humanURL: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
baseURL: https://iiif.library.ubc.ca
tags:
- Library
- IIIF
- Digital Collections
- Image
tags_raw:
- Library
- IIIF
- Digital Collections
- Images
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/ubc-domain-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: ubc:abacus-dataverse
name: UBC Library Abacus Dataverse API
x-operator: institution
description: The REST API of Abacus, UBC Library's research-data repository, running Dataverse 5.9 on UBC's own infrastructure
at abacus.library.ubc.ca. UBC operates the deployment and the data is UBC's and its BC consortium partners'; the contract
itself is Dataverse software's, served by the product at /openapi, and every schema, ruleset and vocabulary in this repo
derived from it inherits that. Verified live 2026-08-19 at /api/info/version. This ONE surface was previously recorded
as twenty-two separate APIs because the refine step splits a contract by tag — the twenty-two OpenAPI documents are kept
as properties here, but they describe one API, not twenty-two.
humanURL: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/
baseURL: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca
tags:
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Dataverse
- Open Data
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-access-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-admin-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-batch-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-builtin-users-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-datasets-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-datatags-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-dataverses-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-edit-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-files-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-harvest-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-info-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-ingest-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-mail-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-meta-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-metadatablocks-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-mydata-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-notifications-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-pids-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-roles-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-search-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-users-api-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-workflows-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/
- type: OpenData
url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/dataverse/ubc_open
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/ubc-dataset-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/ubc-datafile-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/ubc-dataverse-schema.json
- type: JSONStructure
url: json-structure/ubc-dataset-structure.json
- type: JSONStructure
url: json-structure/ubc-dataverse-structure.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/ubc-search-datasets-example.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/ubc-get-dataverse-example.json
- type: Rules
url: rules/ubc-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/ubc-vocabulary.yml
- type: JSONLD
url: json-ld/ubc-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/ubc-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/ubc-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/ubc-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/ubc-lifecycle.yml
- aid: ubc:abacus-oai-pmh
name: Abacus OAI-PMH Metadata Harvesting Endpoint
x-operator: institution
description: 'A working OAI-PMH 2.0 archive on UBC Library''s own host. Verified live 2026-08-19: verb=Identify returns
repositoryName "Abacus Data Network Dataverse OAI Archive", adminEmail abacus-support@lists.ubc.ca; verb=ListMetadataFormats
advertises oai_dc, oai_ddi, Datacite and oai_datacite; verb=ListRecords returns DataCite kernel-4 records. Sets separate
public content (abacus_open) from consortium-licensed content. CORRECTION: the catalog previously pointed this at https://open.library.ubc.ca/oai/request,
which is an Angular SPA behind a bot defence and returns the same HTML shell with HTTP 200 for every path including invented
ones. It never served OAI-PMH.'
humanURL: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/
baseURL: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/oai
tags:
- OAI-PMH
- Metadata
- Harvesting
- Research Data
- DataCite
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/ubc-domain-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: ubc:shibboleth-idp
name: UBC Shibboleth Identity Provider Metadata
x-operator: institution
description: 'UBC''s own SAML 2.0 identity provider metadata, entityID https://authentication.ubc.ca, asserting the ubc.ca
scope. Institution-operated by definition — no vendor can publish this on UBC''s behalf — and it is the only machine-readable
artifact UBC''s central IT serves to the open internet. Verified live 2026-08-19: 9,213 bytes of application/xml headed
"(c) The University of British Columbia / Identity Provider", supporting SAML 2.0, SAML 1.1 and the Shibboleth 1.0 protocol.'
humanURL: https://it.ubc.ca/services
baseURL: https://authentication.ubc.ca
tags:
- Identity Federation
- Shibboleth
- SAML
- Single Sign-On
properties:
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://authentication.ubc.ca/idp/shibboleth
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/ubc-authentication.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/ubc-domain-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: ubc:iec-api-gateway
name: UBC Integration Enablement Centre API Gateway
x-operator: institution
description: 'UBC''s enterprise API gateway, run by the Office of the CIO''s Integration Enablement Centre against the University
Data Model. The host is real and answers — api.ubc.ca returns a flat nginx 403 to any unentitled caller, and DNS resolves
it through api.iec.it.ubc.ca to a MuleSoft Anypoint load balancer, so the gateway is UBC''s tenant of Anypoint on UBC''s
own domain. Nothing about it is self-service: the API catalogue is a Confluence page behind UBC''s login, and access to
any individual API is granted through a Data Access Framework request raised as a ServiceNow ticket. No contract is saved
here because none is published.'
humanURL: https://cio.ubc.ca/data-governance/integration-enablement-centre
baseURL: https://api.ubc.ca
tags:
- Enterprise Integration
- MuleSoft
- Gated
- Institutional Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://cio.ubc.ca/data-governance/integration-enablement-centre
- type: Signup
url: https://cio.ubc.ca/data-governance/data-governance-services/access-ubc-data
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/ubc-authentication.yml
- aid: ubc:it-status
name: UBC IT Service Status API
x-operator: tenant
description: 'Machine-readable service status for UBC IT at status.it.ubc.ca, on UBC''s own hostname but CNAMEd to stspg-customer.com
— UBC''s tenant of Atlassian Statuspage. The status data is UBC''s; the API, its paths and its response shape are Atlassian''s,
shared with every Statuspage customer, so no contract is saved under UBC. Verified live 2026-08-19: /api/v2/status.json
returned page name "UBC" with indicator "minor".'
humanURL: https://status.it.ubc.ca
baseURL: https://status.it.ubc.ca/api/v2
tags:
- Status
- Status Page
tags_raw:
- Status
- Operations
- Statuspage
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://status.it.ubc.ca
- aid: ubc:ubc-collections-api
name: University of British Columbia Collections API
description: Collection-level metadata and item traversal.
humanURL: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
baseURL: https://oc-index.library.ubc.ca
tags:
- Collection
tags_raw:
- Collections
properties:
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/ubc-collections-api-openapi.yml
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
- type: APIReference
url: https://github.com/ubc-library/docs-open-collections-api
- type: Examples
url: examples/ubc-open-collections-collection-example.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/ubc-open-collections-items-example.json
- type: Examples
url: examples/ubc-open-collections-search-example.json
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/ubc-authentication.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/ubc-rate-limits.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/ubc-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/ubc-lifecycle.yml
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: institution_operated_surfaces_verified_enterprise_layer_gated
detail: 'Six institution-operated surfaces and one tenant surface were verified live on 2026-08-19, and the boundary of
what UBC does not publish was probed rather than assumed. UBC Library accounts for the entire open footprint: Open Collections,
its IIIF endpoint, Abacus Dataverse and the Abacus OAI-PMH archive. Central IT''s only open artifact is the Shibboleth
IdP metadata. The enterprise layer is genuinely gated, not missing — api.ubc.ca is live and returns 403, and the IEC''s
API list redirects to a Confluence login, both of which were confirmed rather than inferred. No public course, timetable
or registrar API exists; courses.students.ubc.ca is an HTML schedule viewer and registration now runs in Workday, while
ubcexplorer.io and similar community projects are student-built on non-UBC domains with no evidence of institutional endorsement,
so they are not credited. Two probe hazards shape this profile and are recorded in errors/ubc-errors.yml: every ubc.ca
host sits behind an F5 bot defence that returns HTTP 200 with an HTML block page, and open.library.ubc.ca is additionally
an Angular SPA that returns an identical shell for every path. Both were hit during this run. Two claims from the 2026-06-03
profile did not survive re-probing.'
evidence:
- url: https://oc-index.library.ubc.ca/collections
status: 200
note: 362 collections returned; institution-operated Open Collections API confirmed.
- url: https://oc-index.library.ubc.ca/search/8.5?q=salmon
status: 200
note: Real ElasticSearch hits. The trailing-slash form previously catalogued does not route.
- url: https://oc-index.library.ubc.ca/search/8.5/?q=salmon
status: 200
note: SOFT-404 — body is data.route "Missed Route". Previously credited as a working endpoint.
- url: https://oc-index.library.ubc.ca/collections/berkpost/items?limit=2
status: 429
note: Documented 10 req/min anonymous ceiling enforced live, with seconds-remaining in body.
- url: https://iiif.library.ubc.ca/presentation/cdm.arphotos.1-0031708/manifest
status: 200
note: Real IIIF Presentation manifest, 10,560 bytes JSON.
- url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/api/info/version
status: 200
note: Dataverse 5.9 confirmed on UBC's own host.
- url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/oai?verb=Identify
status: 200
note: Real OAI-PMH 2.0 archive, adminEmail abacus-support@lists.ubc.ca.
- url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/oai?verb=ListMetadataFormats
status: 200
note: oai_dc, oai_ddi, Datacite and oai_datacite advertised.
- url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
note: DEAD AS AN OAI ENDPOINT — returns the site's HTML shell, not OAI-PMH. Pointer removed.
- url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/zzz-nonexistent-path-9999
status: 200
note: Negative control — identical shell for an invented path, proving the soft-200.
- url: https://authentication.ubc.ca/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
note: UBC's own Shibboleth/SAML 2.0 IdP metadata, 9,213 bytes application/xml.
- url: https://api.ubc.ca/
status: 403
note: Enterprise gateway live and refusing; CNAME chain reaches MuleSoft Anypoint.
- url: https://confluence.it.ubc.ca/x/Jo14Bw
status: 200
note: IEC API catalogue; redirects to a Confluence login. Gated, not absent.
- url: https://status.it.ubc.ca/api/v2/status.json
status: 200
note: Atlassian Statuspage API on UBC's hostname — tenant, not UBC's contract.
- url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/api/v1/admin/isOrcid
status: 200
note: BLOCKED — UBC cybersecurity block page returned with HTTP 200. ORCID left unevidenced.
- url: https://courses.students.ubc.ca/cs/courseschedule
status: 200
note: HTML course schedule viewer only; no JSON or documented API surface.
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.ubc.ca/
- type: DeveloperPortal
url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
- type: Documentation
url: https://open.library.ubc.ca/docs
- type: APIReference
url: https://github.com/ubc-library/docs-open-collections-api
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/ubc-library
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/ubc/
- type: Blog
url: https://news.ubc.ca/feed/
- type: Status
url: https://status.it.ubc.ca
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://www.ubc.ca/site/legal.html
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://privacymatters.ubc.ca/
- type: Support
url: https://cio.ubc.ca/data-governance/data-governance-services/access-ubc-data
- type: OpenData
url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/dataverse/ubc_open
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://abacus.library.ubc.ca/
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://www.library.ubc.ca/
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://calendar.ubc.ca/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://authentication.ubc.ca/idp/shibboleth
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://arc.ubc.ca/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://genai.ubc.ca/guidance/principles/
- type: AITooling
url: https://genai.ubc.ca/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/ubc-domain-standards-conformance.yml
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/ubc-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/ubc-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/ubc-errors.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/ubc-lifecycle.yml
- type: AgenticAccess
url: agentic-access/ubc-agentic-access.yml
- type: VulnerabilityDisclosure
url: security/ubc-vulnerability-disclosure.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/ubc-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/ubc-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/ubc-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/ubc-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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