The University of Minnesota is a public land-grant research university whose flagship campus is in the Twin Cities. Its programmable footprint is small, real, and unevenly distributed: the one place it publishes machine-readable contracts of its own is GEMS Informatics, whose Exchange APIs serve agricultural, climate and geospatial data from exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu behind an api key and ship nine live OpenAPI 3.1 documents. Everything else is either gated, undocumented in machine terms, or somebody else's contract running under the University's name. The OIT Integrations Team's Common Good APIs are institution-operated at integration-boomi.umn.edu but are approved per data custodian and their Swagger lives inside a tenant Boomi developer portal that answers no anonymous request. UMN Libraries operates a genuine JSON API over the UMedia digital collections and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint for the Digital Conservancy, but publishes no contract for either, and UMedia's image delivery runs on the Libraries' OCLC CONTENTdm tenancy rather than on University infrastructure. The strongest institution-operated machine-readable surface the University has is not an API at all: it is the Shibboleth identity provider it publishes through InCommon as urn:mace:incommon:umn.edu. There is no central developer portal, no institution-wide API catalog, and no public API programme.
University of Minnesota publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network: GEMS Informatics Exchange APIs and UMedia Digital Collections JSON API. Tagged areas include University, Higher Education, Education, Research, and United States.
The University of Minnesota catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.
University of Minnesota’s developer surface includes documentation, API reference, support, authentication, code examples, and 24 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/.
Ten agricultural, climate and geospatial data APIs operated by GEMS Informatics at the University of Minnesota — biotic risk, climate, crop calendar, elevation, hydrology, land ...
A suite of APIs published by the OIT Integrations Team over the University's Common Data Layer — person, class, employee, student academic, organization, HR and term information...
A read-only JSON API over UMedia, the University of Minnesota Libraries digital collections platform. Any search or item URL returns JSON when ".json" is appended, with Blacklig...
The University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, which also holds DRUM (Data Repository for the University of Minnesota), runs DSpace 10.0 on University infrastructure. Its OAI-...
The University operates its own Shibboleth identity provider and publishes it through the InCommon federation as entityID urn:mace:incommon:umn.edu, with shibmd:Scope umn.edu an...
The University of Minnesota is a DataCite direct member, symbol UMN, registered since 2018-12-19 and linked to ROR 017zqws13. It operates the repository client UMN.DRUM (Data Re...
The University of Minnesota is Crossref member 10551, registering DOIs under prefixes 10.24926 and 10.64517. University of Minnesota Press (member 3779, prefix 10.5749) and Univ...
The University of Minnesota's Research Organization Registry identifier is https://ror.org/017zqws13. It is the identifier DataCite links the University's membership to, and the...
The University's developer portal for the Common Good APIs runs as a UMN-specific tenant on Boomi's cloud at umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud, where it catalogues twenty-four APIs and...
UMedia's digital objects are delivered over the IIIF Image API 2.1 from the Libraries' OCLC CONTENTdm instance at cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org, which every UMedia record points t...
aid: university-of-minnesota
name: University of Minnesota
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
description: 'The University of Minnesota is a public land-grant research university whose flagship campus is in the Twin
Cities. Its programmable footprint is small, real, and unevenly distributed: the one place it publishes machine-readable
contracts of its own is GEMS Informatics, whose Exchange APIs serve agricultural, climate and geospatial data from exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu
behind an api key and ship nine live OpenAPI 3.1 documents. Everything else is either gated, undocumented in machine terms,
or somebody else''s contract running under the University''s name. The OIT Integrations Team''s Common Good APIs are institution-operated
at integration-boomi.umn.edu but are approved per data custodian and their Swagger lives inside a tenant Boomi developer
portal that answers no anonymous request. UMN Libraries operates a genuine JSON API over the UMedia digital collections
and an OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint for the Digital Conservancy, but publishes no contract for either, and UMedia''s image delivery
runs on the Libraries'' OCLC CONTENTdm tenancy rather than on University infrastructure. The strongest institution-operated
machine-readable surface the University has is not an API at all: it is the Shibboleth identity provider it publishes through
InCommon as urn:mace:incommon:umn.edu. There is no central developer portal, no institution-wide API catalog, and no public
API programme.'
type: Index
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: false
commercial: true
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: high
source:
- openapi
- probed
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: request
trial: true
try_now: false
public: false
label: Free, request-gated
confidence: medium
source:
- plans
- probed
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
position: Producing
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-minnesota.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-minnesota/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- University
- Higher Education
- Education
- Research
- United States
- Minnesota
- Big Ten
- Land Grant
- Public Research University
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Open Data
- Geospatial
- Agriculture
- Climate
- Digital Collections
- Identity Federation
- Research Computing
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-09-01'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: covered
detail: 'Re-profiled on 2026-09-01 under the university pipeline with the operator axis settled before anything was saved.
Ten programmable surfaces were resolved: four institution-operated, two tenant, three registry memberships and one identity
federation. Nine first-party OpenAPI 3.1 documents were found live at exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu and saved with pristine
copies under openapi/_original/; a tenth GEMS API (weather) is real but gates its own openapi.json behind the api key.
One derived contract was written for the UMedia JSON API, which UMN Libraries documents in prose but does not publish
machine-readably, and it is marked derived. Two surfaces were NOT saved as contracts on purpose: the Common Good API Swagger,
which exists only inside the University''s tenant Boomi developer portal and answered no anonymous path, and the Digital
Conservancy REST API, whose contract is DSpace''s product contract rather than the University''s. The UMedia IIIF image
API was split out from the metadata API and re-labelled tenant, because it is served by the Libraries'' OCLC CONTENTdm
instance at cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org and is OCLC''s engineering, not the University''s. A DNS pass was run over every
institution host: umedia.lib.umn.edu and conservancy.umn.edu both CNAME to a University-owned Azure Front Door endpoint,
which is CDN infrastructure rather than a vendor platform tenancy, so their operator stays institution; exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu
resolves into the University''s own 128.101.0.0/16 address space; and umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud resolves to an AWS load
balancer named umnprodgw, confirming the Boomi portal as a dedicated UMN tenancy rather than a shared vendor host. Two
institution hosts return 403 from an Azure Front Door WAF to a non-browser client while their machine-readable paths answer
200; both are recorded as live and bot-blocked, not as dead.'
generated: '2026-09-01'
method: probed
evidence:
- url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/soil/v2/openapi.json
status: 200
- url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/hydro/v2/openapi.json
status: 200
- url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/weather/v2/openapi.json
status: 401
- url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/soil/v2/datasets
status: 401
- url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/portal/home
status: 200
- url: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/search.json?q=test
status: 200
- url: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/item/p16022coll251:3420.json
status: 200
- url: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu/
status: 403
- url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api
status: 200
- url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api/core/items?size=1
status: 401
- url: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/integration-apis/common-good-apis
status: 200
- url: https://umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud:18077/#catalog
status: 200
- url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn%3Amace%3Aincommon%3Aumn.edu
status: 200
- url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/umn
status: 200
- url: https://api.crossref.org/members/10551
status: 200
- url: https://ror.org/017zqws13
status: 200
- url: https://data.umn.edu/api/3/action/package_list
status: 404
- url: https://twin-cities.umn.edu/llms.txt
status: 404
- url: https://integration-boomi.umn.edu/prd/ws/rest/
status: 0
note: Does not resolve on public DNS (NXDOMAIN at 8.8.8.8). The Common Good APIs are real and institution-operated, but
the gateway is reachable only from inside the University network.
- url: https://conservancy.umn.edu
status: 403
note: Azure Front Door WAF challenge on the HTML UI. Bot-blocked, not dead — the OAI-PMH and DSpace REST paths on the
same host answer 200.
apis:
- aid: university-of-minnesota:gems-exchange-apis
name: GEMS Informatics Exchange APIs
x-operator: institution
description: Ten agricultural, climate and geospatial data APIs operated by GEMS Informatics at the University of Minnesota
— biotic risk, climate, crop calendar, elevation, hydrology, land cover, market accessibility, pedigree tools, soils and
weather. Each is a separately versioned FastAPI deployment behind one gateway, and nine of the ten publish a live OpenAPI
3.1 document anonymously. Data paths require an `apikey` header obtained from the GEMS portal; the contracts do not declare
that requirement. This is the only surface where the University publishes machine-readable contracts of its own.
humanURL: https://gems.umn.edu/gems-exchange-apis
baseURL: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu
tags:
- Geospatial
- Agriculture
- Climate
- Weather
- Soils
- Research Data
- Open Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://gems.umn.edu/gems-exchange-apis
- type: APIReference
url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/soil/v2/docs
- type: Signup
url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/portal/home
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/GEMS-UMN/Exchange-Notebooks
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-soil-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-climate-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-hydro-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-elevation-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-landcover-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-crop-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-market-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-biotic-risk-openapi.yml
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-pedtools-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-minnesota-gems-exchange-schemas.json
- aid: university-of-minnesota:common-good-apis
name: Common Good APIs
x-operator: institution
description: A suite of APIs published by the OIT Integrations Team over the University's Common Data Layer — person, class,
employee, student academic, organization, HR and term information. Served from a University-hosted Boomi integration gateway
at integration-boomi.umn.edu, so the runtime is the institution's. Access is graded by the University's own data classification
(public, private, restricted, highly restricted) and granted per data custodian. Per-API Swagger exists only inside the
University's tenant Boomi developer portal; no anonymous path to it was reachable, so no contract for these APIs is held
here. The documented base host does not resolve on public DNS (NXDOMAIN at 8.8.8.8), so the surface is institution-operated
but reachable only from inside the University network.
humanURL: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/integration-apis/common-good-apis
baseURL: https://integration-boomi.umn.edu/prd/ws/rest/
tags:
- Integration
- Students
- HR
- Employee
- Identity
- Education
tags_raw:
- Integration
- Student
- HR
- Employee
- Identity
- Education
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/integration-apis/common-good-apis
- type: Signup
url: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/integration-apis/home
- aid: university-of-minnesota:umedia-digital-collections
name: UMedia Digital Collections JSON API
x-operator: institution
description: A read-only JSON API over UMedia, the University of Minnesota Libraries digital collections platform. Any search
or item URL returns JSON when ".json" is appended, with Blacklight bracket facet syntax for filtering and a `rows` parameter
that is how bulk metadata export is performed. UMN Libraries documents it in a public repository but publishes no contract;
the OpenAPI in this repository is derived by API Evangelist from live responses and is marked as such. Image delivery
is NOT part of this surface — see the CONTENTdm IIIF entry.
humanURL: https://github.com/UMNLibraries/digital_collection_apis
baseURL: https://umedia.lib.umn.edu
tags:
- Library
- Digital Collections
- Metadata
- Open Data
- Research Data
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/UMNLibraries/digital_collection_apis
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/UMNLibraries/digital_collection_apis
- type: OpenAPI
url: openapi/university-of-minnesota-umedia-openapi.yml
- type: JSONSchema
url: json-schema/university-of-minnesota-umedia-item.json
- aid: university-of-minnesota:digital-conservancy-oai-pmh
name: UMN Digital Conservancy — OAI-PMH and DSpace REST
x-operator: institution
description: The University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, which also holds DRUM (Data Repository for the University
of Minnesota), runs DSpace 10.0 on University infrastructure. Its OAI-PMH 2.0 endpoint answers anonymously under the University's
own repositoryIdentifier (conservancy.umn.edu) with a umn.edu admin contact, and its DSpace REST root is publicly readable
for communities and collections while item endpoints require authentication. The deployment is the institution's; the
REST contract is DSpace's product contract, so none is saved here.
humanURL: https://conservancy.umn.edu
baseURL: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/oai/request
tags:
- Research Repository
- OAI-PMH
- DSpace
- Open Access
- Research Data
properties:
- type: APIReference
url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: Documentation
url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/api
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-minnesota-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-minnesota:incommon-identity-federation
name: InCommon Identity Federation — University of Minnesota Shibboleth IdP
x-operator: federation
description: The University operates its own Shibboleth identity provider and publishes it through the InCommon federation
as entityID urn:mace:incommon:umn.edu, with shibmd:Scope umn.edu and SAML 2.0 single sign-on endpoints at login.umn.edu.
The metadata host is shared because a federation is shared by definition; the identity provider behind it is entirely
the institution's, and it is the machine-readable surface the largest number of University systems actually depend on.
humanURL: https://incommon.org
baseURL: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn%3Amace%3Aincommon%3Aumn.edu
tags:
- Identity Federation
- Shibboleth
- SAML
- InCommon
- Single Sign-On
properties:
- type: APIReference
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn%3Amace%3Aincommon%3Aumn.edu
- type: Example
url: examples/incommon-umn-idp-metadata.xml
- aid: university-of-minnesota:datacite-membership
name: DataCite membership — University of Minnesota
x-operator: registry
description: The University of Minnesota is a DataCite direct member, symbol UMN, registered since 2018-12-19 and linked
to ROR 017zqws13. It operates the repository client UMN.DRUM (Data Repository for the University of Minnesota) against
DOI prefix 10.13020. This is a fact about the institution retrieved from a registry it is registered in; DataCite's own
API contract is DataCite's and is not saved here.
humanURL: https://api.datacite.org/providers/umn
baseURL: https://api.datacite.org/providers/umn
tags:
- DOI
- DataCite
- Persistent Identifiers
- Research Data
properties:
- type: APIReference
url: https://api.datacite.org/providers/umn
- type: Registry
url: https://api.datacite.org/clients/umn.drum
- type: Example
url: examples/datacite-provider-umn.json
- aid: university-of-minnesota:crossref-membership
name: Crossref membership — University of Minnesota
x-operator: registry
description: The University of Minnesota is Crossref member 10551, registering DOIs under prefixes 10.24926 and 10.64517.
University of Minnesota Press (member 3779, prefix 10.5749) and University of Minnesota Morris (member 13440, prefix 10.61366)
are separately registered members of the same institution. Recorded as a membership; Crossref's contract is Crossref's.
humanURL: https://www.crossref.org
baseURL: https://api.crossref.org/members/10551
tags:
- DOI
- Crossref
- Persistent Identifiers
- Scholarly Publishing
properties:
- type: APIReference
url: https://api.crossref.org/members/10551
- aid: university-of-minnesota:ror-registration
name: ROR registration — University of Minnesota
x-operator: registry
description: The University of Minnesota's Research Organization Registry identifier is https://ror.org/017zqws13. It is
the identifier DataCite links the University's membership to, and the one that makes cross-registry attribution for this
institution resolvable.
humanURL: https://ror.org/017zqws13
baseURL: https://api.ror.org/organizations/017zqws13
tags:
- ROR
- Persistent Identifiers
- Organization Identity
properties:
- type: APIReference
url: https://api.ror.org/organizations/017zqws13
- aid: university-of-minnesota:boomi-api-developer-portal
name: Boomi API Developer Portal (UMN tenant)
x-operator: tenant
description: The University's developer portal for the Common Good APIs runs as a UMN-specific tenant on Boomi's cloud at
umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud, where it catalogues twenty-four APIs and holds their Swagger documentation. The catalogue
and its contents are the University's; the portal software, its hosting and its contract are Boomi's. Recorded as a tenancy
so the relationship is legible without crediting the University for Boomi's engineering — and without crediting Boomi
with the University's data APIs, which run on umn.edu.
humanURL: https://umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud:18077/#catalog
baseURL: https://umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud:18077
tags:
- Developer Portal
- API Gateway
- Integration
- Tenant
properties:
- type: DeveloperPortal
url: https://umn-prod-apigw.boomi.cloud:18077/#catalog
- aid: university-of-minnesota:contentdm-iiif
name: UMedia IIIF image delivery (OCLC CONTENTdm tenant)
x-operator: tenant
description: UMedia's digital objects are delivered over the IIIF Image API 2.1 from the Libraries' OCLC CONTENTdm instance
at cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org, which every UMedia record points to in its `object` and `thumb_cdn_url` fields. The collections
and the tenancy are the University's; the IIIF implementation and its conformance are OCLC's. Previously catalogued as
part of a single University-operated "UMedia JSON and IIIF" surface, which credited the University with a vendor's implementation.
humanURL: https://github.com/UMNLibraries/digital_collection_apis
baseURL: https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/iiif/
tags:
- IIIF
- Digital Collections
- Images
- CONTENTdm
- Tenant
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/UMNLibraries/digital_collection_apis
common:
- type: Website
url: https://twin-cities.umn.edu
- type: DeveloperPortal
url: https://sites.google.com/umn.edu/integration-apis/home
- type: Documentation
url: https://gems.umn.edu/gems-exchange-apis
- type: APIReference
url: https://exchange-1.gems.msi.umn.edu/soil/v2/docs
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/UMNLibraries
- type: SourceCode
url: https://github.com/GEMS-UMN
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/university-of-minnesota/
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://policy.umn.edu
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://privacy.umn.edu
- type: Support
url: https://it.umn.edu
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://conservancy.umn.edu/server/oai/request?verb=Identify
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://www.lib.umn.edu
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn%3Amace%3Aincommon%3Aumn.edu
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://rc.umn.edu
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://it.umn.edu/navigating-ai-umn
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/university-of-minnesota-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/university-of-minnesota-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/university-of-minnesota-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/university-of-minnesota-finops.yml
- type: JSONLD
url: json-ld/university-of-minnesota-context.jsonld
- type: Authentication
url: authentication/university-of-minnesota-authentication.yml
- type: Scopes
url: scopes/university-of-minnesota-scopes.yml
- type: Errors
url: errors/university-of-minnesota-errors.yml
- type: Rules
url: rules/university-of-minnesota-rules.yml
- type: Vocabulary
url: vocabulary/university-of-minnesota-vocabulary.yml
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-minnesota-conformance.yml
- type: Lifecycle
url: lifecycle/university-of-minnesota-lifecycle.yml
- type: Examples
url: examples/university-of-minnesota-examples.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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