University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a member of the Association of American Universities and the flagship of the seventeen-campus University of North Carolina System. It operates no central developer portal, no API gateway, and publishes no OpenAPI of its own — but it does run several genuinely institution-engineered machine-readable surfaces. The strongest is the Carolina Digital Repository services API at dcr.lib.unc.edu, including IIIF Presentation 3.0 and Image 3.0 endpoints, served by box-c, a repository application UNC Libraries writes and maintains in the open on GitHub. Alongside it are two Blacklight JSON search APIs on UNC's own hardware (the TRLN Discovery library catalog and the Wilson Library finding aids), an OAI-PMH 2.0 archive on UNC Dataverse advertising DataCite metadata, and UNC's own Shibboleth/InCommon SAML 2.0 metadata. The rest of the programmable footprint is tenant relationships rather than UNC engineering: the UNC Dataverse native REST API is the Dataverse product's contract, the course-catalog search API is Leepfrog CourseLeaf's, the GIS open-data hub is Esri ArcGIS Hub's, and the Digital Collections search at dc.lib.unc.edu is OCLC CONTENTdm. The Facilities SPOTS REST API is institution-operated but its documentation is entirely Onyen-gated and could not be read.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill publishes 10 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Education, Higher Education, University, Public Research University, and United States.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s developer surface includes documentation, authentication, support, engineering blog, and 22 more developer resources.
10 APIs
Business capabilities this provider's published APIs can perform, derived from its own
contracts. Browse all capabilities →
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill
name: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
description: 'The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
a member of the Association of American Universities and the flagship of the seventeen-campus University of North Carolina
System. It operates no central developer portal, no API gateway, and publishes no OpenAPI of its own — but it does run several
genuinely institution-engineered machine-readable surfaces. The strongest is the Carolina Digital Repository services API
at dcr.lib.unc.edu, including IIIF Presentation 3.0 and Image 3.0 endpoints, served by box-c, a repository application UNC
Libraries writes and maintains in the open on GitHub. Alongside it are two Blacklight JSON search APIs on UNC''s own hardware
(the TRLN Discovery library catalog and the Wilson Library finding aids), an OAI-PMH 2.0 archive on UNC Dataverse advertising
DataCite metadata, and UNC''s own Shibboleth/InCommon SAML 2.0 metadata. The rest of the programmable footprint is tenant
relationships rather than UNC engineering: the UNC Dataverse native REST API is the Dataverse product''s contract, the course-catalog
search API is Leepfrog CourseLeaf''s, the GIS open-data hub is Esri ArcGIS Hub''s, and the Digital Collections search at
dc.lib.unc.edu is OCLC CONTENTdm. The Facilities SPOTS REST API is institution-operated but its documentation is entirely
Onyen-gated and could not be read.'
x-type: university
x-category: Public Research University
type: Index
deliveryModel:
model: saas
open_source: true
commercial: false
callable_host: true
label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
confidence: medium
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-08-30'
method: probed
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
accessModel:
pricing: free
onboarding: none
trial: false
try_now: true
public: true
label: Free · keyless public read endpoints
confidence: high
source:
- probed
generated: '2026-08-30'
method: probed
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill.png
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Public Research University
- United States
- North Carolina
- University of North Carolina System
- Association of American Universities
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Digital Library
- Library
- Course Catalog
- Identity Federation
- Geospatial
- Open-Source
tags_raw:
- Education
- Higher Education
- University
- Public Research University
- United States
- North Carolina
- University of North Carolina System
- Association of American Universities
- Research Data
- Open Data
- Digital Library
- Library
- Course Catalog
- Identity Federation
- Geospatial
- Open Source
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-08-30'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:cdr-services-api
name: Carolina Digital Repository Services API (box-c)
description: 'Public, keyless JSON API behind the Carolina Digital Repository, UNC Libraries'' institutional repository
for digitized special collections, theses, dissertations and research output. GET /services/api/search returns Solr-backed
results over 2,102,332 indexed records with faceting, and the same service publishes IIIF Presentation API 3.0 manifests
(/services/api/iiif/v3/{id}/manifest) and IIIF Image API 3.0 image information (/services/api/iiif/v3/{id}/info.json).
Errors are returned as RFC 7807 application/problem+json. The service is box-c — a Java/Spring application that UNC Libraries
itself writes, tests and releases in the open at https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/box-c — so both the deployment and the
contract are UNC''s own engineering. Some administrative paths (/services/api/status) return 401 and are staff-only. There
is no published API reference: the endpoints below were found by probe, and the source repository is the documentation.'
humanURL: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/aboutRepository
baseURL: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/services/api
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: 'dcr.lib.unc.edu is under UNC''s own registrable domain and CNAMEs to hawadax.lib.unc.edu (152.2.176.62),
inside UNC Libraries'' own network. The application serving it, box-c, is authored and maintained by UNC Libraries (github.com/UNC-Libraries/box-c,
homepage https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/aboutRepository, last pushed 2026-08-28). No vendor contract is involved: UNC wrote this
one.'
tags:
- Research Repository
- Digital Library
- IIIF
- Search
- Open-Source
tags_raw:
- Research Repository
- Digital Library
- IIIF
- Search
- Open Source
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/box-c
- type: Website
url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-education-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:library-catalog-search
name: UNC Libraries Catalog Search API (TRLN Discovery / Blacklight)
description: The UNC University Library catalog answers machine-readable search over its full bibliographic index at /catalog.json,
the Blacklight JSON response format, with query, search_field, facet and pagination parameters carried on the query string.
Verified keyless and live on 2026-08-30. The application is TRLN Discovery, the Triangle Research Libraries Network's
open-source Blacklight stack, which UNC Libraries deploys and extends itself — its ingest adaptation is public at https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/disco-ingest.
No API reference is published; the response shape is Blacklight's.
humanURL: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog.json
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: catalog.lib.unc.edu CNAMEs to disco.lib.unc.edu (152.2.176.35), UNC Libraries' own host. The software
is open-source Blacklight/TRLN Discovery that UNC runs and modifies itself, not a hosted vendor platform and not an account
on someone else's service.
tags:
- Library
- Library Catalog
- Search
- Blacklight
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/
- type: GitHub
url: https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/disco-ingest
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:finding-aids-search
name: UNC Finding Aids Search API (Blacklight JSON:API)
description: Machine-readable search across the finding aids of the Wilson Special Collections Library, served at /catalog.json
in Blacklight's JSON:API form — a `links` object with self/next/last, a `meta.pages` block with current_page, next_page
and total page count, and `data` records. Verified keyless and live on 2026-08-30 (a `civil war` query returned 360 pages
of results). No API reference is published.
humanURL: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/catalog.json
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: finding-aids.lib.unc.edu CNAMEs to morganton.lib.unc.edu (152.2.176.11), UNC Libraries' own host, running
an open-source Blacklight application UNC deploys itself.
tags:
- Library
- Archives
- Finding Aids
- Search
- Blacklight
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:dataverse-oai-pmh
name: UNC Dataverse OAI-PMH Archive
description: 'OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint for the UNC Dataverse research data repository, operated by the Odum Institute
/ Institute for Research in Social Science. Identify reports repositoryName "UNC Dataverse Dataverse OAI Archive", protocolVersion
2.0, granularity YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ, earliestDatestamp 2016-11-09, and gzip/deflate compression. ListMetadataFormats
advertises oai_dc, oai_ddi, dataverse_json and both `Datacite` and `oai_datacite`. Keyless, live and verified on 2026-08-30.
Recorded separately from the Dataverse native REST API because OAI-PMH is an open standard rather than a product contract:
the interface is the community''s, the archive and the metadata are UNC''s.'
humanURL: https://dataverse.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://dataverse.unc.edu/oai
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: dataverse.unc.edu CNAMEs to dataverse-aws.irss.unc.edu (52.22.144.218), an AWS deployment in UNC's
own IRSS/Odum account, and the OAI adminEmail is do-not-reply@dataverse-aws.rdmc.unc.edu. The harvesting interface conforms
to OAI-PMH 2.0, a published open standard, so no vendor owns the contract.
tags:
- Research Data
- OAI-PMH
- Metadata Harvesting
- DataCite
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-education-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:shibboleth-idp
name: UNC Shibboleth Identity Provider (SAML 2.0 / InCommon)
description: UNC's Onyen single sign-on is a Shibboleth Identity Provider that publishes SAML 2.0 metadata at its canonical
/idp/shibboleth location — an EntityDescriptor with an IDPSSODescriptor and HTTP-POST, HTTP-POST-SimpleSign and HTTP-Redirect
SingleSignOnService bindings. The same IdP is registered in the InCommon federation (and thereby eduGAIN) as urn:mace:incommon:unc.edu,
whose signed metadata the InCommon MDQ service returns on demand. This is the one programmable surface a university operates
by definition and it is almost never catalogued.
humanURL: https://sso.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://sso.unc.edu/idp
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: sso.unc.edu CNAMEs to ssop.isis.unc.edu (152.2.64.79), UNC's own identity infrastructure. Federation
membership under urn:mace:incommon:unc.edu is an institutional fact registered by UNC itself; no vendor sits between UNC
and this metadata.
tags:
- Identity Federation
- SAML
- Shibboleth
- InCommon
- Single Sign-On
properties:
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://sso.unc.edu/idp/shibboleth
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn:mace:incommon:unc.edu
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-education-standards-conformance.yml
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:facilities-spots
name: Facilities SPOTS REST API
description: REST API for the Space Planning and Occupancy Tracking System run by UNC Facilities Services, the campus system
of record for building and room space data. The documentation page resolves (200) but its body is replaced with "This
content is Onyen protected. Please enter your Onyen to log in and view it." — no endpoint, no schema and no authentication
detail is publicly readable. Recorded as an institution-operated surface that is entirely auth-gated; nothing about its
contract is claimed here because nothing about its contract could be read.
humanURL: https://facilities.unc.edu/resources/mapping-and-space/spots-rest-api/
x-operator: institution
x-operator-evidence: facilities.unc.edu is UNC's own registrable domain; SPOTS is a UNC Facilities Services system and the
gate on it is UNC's own Onyen SSO.
tags:
- Facilities
- Space Management
- Campus Life
- Authenticated
properties:
- type: Documentation
url: https://facilities.unc.edu/resources/mapping-and-space/spots-rest-api/
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:dataverse-native-api
name: UNC Dataverse Native REST API (Dataverse deployment)
description: UNC Dataverse, the Odum Institute's research data repository, runs Dataverse 6.8 and exposes the Dataverse
Native REST API at /api. GET /api/info/version is keyless and returned {"version":"6.8","build":"with-mdq-bugfix"} on
2026-08-30; GET /api/search returns 401 "Only authenticated users can perform the requested operation" and needs an X-Dataverse-key
token. The deployment is UNC's and the data in it is UNC's, but the contract is the Dataverse product's — identical in
title, description and shape to the specs eight other institutions in this catalog ship — so no OpenAPI is stored under
this profile. Thirty-six per-tag OpenAPI documents, their pristine source spec and 84 artifacts derived from them — 122
files in all — were removed from this repository on 2026-08-30 for exactly that reason. Score the contract against Dataverse's
own project, not against UNC.
humanURL: https://dataverse.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://dataverse.unc.edu/api
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: The host is UNC's (dataverse.unc.edu CNAME dataverse-aws.irss.unc.edu), so a hostname-only verdict
reads `institution` — but the contract is host-independent. info.title "Dataverse API", info.description "Open source
research data repository software" and version 6.8 are the Dataverse project's, and audit-university-contracts.py finds
the same normalized titles shipped by harvard, maastricht, ntnu, queens-university-at-kingston and four others. The relationship
is real and is kept; the product's spec is not.
tags:
- Research Data
- Research Repository
- Dataverse
- Shared Contract
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/
- type: Documentation
url: https://guides.dataverse.org/en/latest/api/
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:course-catalog-search
name: UNC Catalog Course Search API (CourseLeaf)
description: The University Catalog exposes a keyless JSON course-search API at /course-search/api/?page=fose&route=search.
A POST carrying a criteria array returns {"srcdb","count","results":[{"key","code","srcdb","title","offsets","rank"}]}
— a live query for "computer" returned 278 UNC courses for srcdb 2026 on 2026-08-30. This is the closest thing UNC has
to a public course-catalog API. The contract is CourseLeaf's "fose" search interface, shipped identically by every Leepfrog
customer, so the deployment is recorded and the interface is not credited to UNC.
humanURL: https://catalog.unc.edu/
baseURL: https://catalog.unc.edu/course-search/api/
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: catalog.unc.edu CNAMEs to unc-public.courseleaf.com (12.175.6.47) — UNC's branded tenant on Leepfrog's
CourseLeaf platform. The course data is UNC's; the platform, the endpoint shape and the fose protocol are Leepfrog's.
tags:
- Course Catalog
- Registrar
- CourseLeaf
- Search
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://catalog.unc.edu/
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://catalog.unc.edu/course-search/
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:gis-opendata
name: UNC GIS Open Data Hub (ArcGIS Hub DCAT-US)
description: UNC-Chapel Hill's campus open-data site for geospatial and institutional datasets, published through ArcGIS
Hub. The DCAT-US 1.1 catalog feed at /api/feed/dcat-us/1.1.json returned 48,189 bytes of application/json on 2026-08-30,
conforming to the project-open-data v1.1 schema, and the underlying ArcGIS REST / GeoServices feature endpoints serve
GeoJSON and CSV. The datasets are UNC's; the catalog contract is Esri's.
humanURL: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/
baseURL: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/api/feed/dcat-us/1.1.json
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: 'gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com is a UNC-specific account on Esri''s shared ArcGIS Hub platform
(resolving to Esri-operated AWS addresses 184.72.158.166 / 34.225.249.205 / 3.215.20.206), not a UNC-operated host. Textbook
tenant: institution''s data, vendor''s contract and vendor''s infrastructure.'
tags:
- Geospatial
- GIS
- Open Data
- ArcGIS
- DCAT
properties:
- type: OpenData
url: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/
- type: Documentation
url: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/
- aid: university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill:digital-collections
name: UNC Digital Collections Search (OCLC CONTENTdm)
description: '"Search the Special Collections", UNC University Library''s discovery layer over its digitized special collections.
A WordPress front at the root fronts an OCLC CONTENTdm 6.10 installation that handles /digital/ and all unmatched paths.
This entry corrects an earlier profile that described dc.lib.unc.edu as running box-c: box-c is real and is UNC''s own
work, but its deployment is the Carolina Digital Repository at dcr.lib.unc.edu (recorded separately above), not this host.
No keyless CONTENTdm API path was found in probing on 2026-08-30 — /digital/api/search/collection/all, /api/listJson/collections
and /iiif/v3/collection/root all returned HTML or 404 from the CONTENTdm error handler.'
humanURL: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/
x-operator: tenant
x-operator-evidence: 'dc.lib.unc.edu CNAMEs to lookout.lib.unc.edu (152.2.176.89), so UNC runs the server — but the application,
the URL scheme and any API contract are OCLC CONTENTdm''s, identified from the "CONTENTdm Version 6.10.0.473s/6.10.0.918w
(c) OCLC" comment served on its own error pages. Recorded as tenant on the same principle as the Dataverse deployment:
institution-hosted, vendor-contracted.'
tags:
- Digital Library
- Special Collections
- CONTENTdm
properties:
- type: Website
url: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/
common:
- type: Website
url: https://www.unc.edu/
- type: Documentation
url: https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/box-c
- type: GitHubOrganization
url: https://github.com/UNC-Libraries
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/
- type: ResearchRepository
url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/
- type: LibraryCatalog
url: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/
- type: CourseCatalog
url: https://catalog.unc.edu/
- type: OpenData
url: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://sso.unc.edu/idp/shibboleth
- type: IdentityFederation
url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn:mace:incommon:unc.edu
- type: ResearchComputing
url: https://help.rc.unc.edu/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://ai.unc.edu/ai-guidance-for-faculty/
- type: AIPolicy
url: https://ai.unc.edu/staff-generative-ai-usage-guidance/
- type: AITooling
url: https://ai.unc.edu/tools/
- type: Authentication
url: https://sso.unc.edu/
- type: TermsOfService
url: https://policies.unc.edu/
- type: PrivacyPolicy
url: https://www.unc.edu/about/privacy-statement/
- type: Support
url: https://help.unc.edu/
- type: Blog
url: https://www.unc.edu/feed/
- type: LinkedIn
url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/unc-chapel-hill/
- type: Conformance
url: conformance/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-education-standards-conformance.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
url: security/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-domain-security.yml
- type: Plans
url: plans/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
url: rate-limits/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
url: finops/university-of-north-carolina-at-chapel-hill-finops.yml
- type: Review
url: review.yml
x-coverage:
state: covered
reason: covered
detail: 'UNC-Chapel Hill operates five verified institution-owned machine-readable surfaces — the Carolina Digital Repository
services API and its IIIF 3.0 endpoints (box-c, software UNC Libraries writes itself), the TRLN Discovery library catalog
JSON API, the Wilson Library finding-aids JSON:API, the UNC Dataverse OAI-PMH 2.0 archive, and its own Shibboleth/InCommon
SAML 2.0 metadata — plus one institution-operated surface, the Facilities SPOTS REST API, that is entirely Onyen-gated
and whose contract could not be read. Four further surfaces are tenant relationships and their contracts are not credited
to UNC: the Dataverse native REST API (Dataverse''s contract, shipped by eight institutions in this catalog), the course-catalog
search API (Leepfrog CourseLeaf, catalog.unc.edu CNAME unc-public.courseleaf.com), the GIS open-data hub (Esri ArcGIS
Hub) and the Digital Collections search (OCLC CONTENTdm). UNC publishes no developer portal, no API gateway, no API terms
of service and no OpenAPI of its own; the thirty-six per-tag OpenAPI documents this repository previously held were the
Dataverse product''s spec split by refine-openapis, and they, their pristine source spec and 84 artifacts derived from
them — 122 files — were removed on 2026-08-30. An earlier claim that dc.lib.unc.edu runs box-c was corrected: that host
is OCLC CONTENTdm, and box-c runs the Carolina Digital Repository at dcr.lib.unc.edu.'
evidence:
- url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/services/api/search?q=carolina&rows=1
status: 200
- url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/services/api/iiif/v3/bfe93126-849a-43a5-b9d9-391e18ffacc6/manifest
status: 200
- url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/services/api/iiif/v3/bfe93126-849a-43a5-b9d9-391e18ffacc6/info.json
status: 200
- url: https://catalog.lib.unc.edu/catalog.json?q=chapel+hill&search_field=all_fields
status: 200
- url: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/catalog.json?q=civil+war
status: 200
- url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/oai?verb=Identify
status: 200
- url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/oai?verb=ListMetadataFormats
status: 200
- url: https://sso.unc.edu/idp/shibboleth
status: 200
- url: https://mdq.incommon.org/entities/urn:mace:incommon:unc.edu
status: 200
- url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/api/info/version
status: 200
- url: https://dataverse.unc.edu/api/search?q=health
status: 401
- url: https://catalog.unc.edu/course-search/api/?page=fose&route=search
status: 200
- url: https://gisdata-uncadmin.opendata.arcgis.com/api/feed/dcat-us/1.1.json
status: 200
- url: https://facilities.unc.edu/resources/mapping-and-space/spots-rest-api/
status: 200
- url: https://dcr.lib.unc.edu/services/api/status
status: 401
- url: https://api.unc.edu/
status: 0
- url: https://data.unc.edu/
status: 0
generated: '2026-08-30'
method: probed
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
email: kin@apievangelist.com
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