Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides a free REST API that gives access to metadata for 50 million+ cultural heritage items aggregated from 4,000+ US libraries, archives, and museums. The API supports full-text search, field-specific queries, geographic and date range filtering, faceted browsing, and JSONP callbacks. All results are returned as JSON-LD. API keys are issued free of charge via a self-service email-based registration endpoint. DPLA aggregates contributions from cultural heritage institutions across the United States and makes the combined metadata freely available to researchers, developers, and the public.

2 APIs 0 Features

Cultural HeritageLibrariesArchivesMuseumsOpen DataMetadataDigital CollectionsPublic Domain

GitHubOrganization

Sources

aid: dpla
name: Digital Public Library of America
description: >-
  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) provides a free REST API
  that gives access to metadata for 50 million+ cultural heritage items
  aggregated from 4,000+ US libraries, archives, and museums. The API
  supports full-text search, field-specific queries, geographic and date
  range filtering, faceted browsing, and JSONP callbacks. All results are
  returned as JSON-LD. API keys are issued free of charge via a self-service
  email-based registration endpoint. DPLA aggregates contributions from
  cultural heritage institutions across the United States and makes the
  combined metadata freely available to researchers, developers, and the
  public.
type: Index
position: Provider
access: Public
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
  - Cultural Heritage
  - Libraries
  - Archives
  - Museums
  - Open Data
  - Metadata
  - Digital Collections
  - Public Domain
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - aid: dpla:items-api
    name: DPLA Items API
    description: >-
      The DPLA Items API provides search and retrieval of metadata records
      for cultural heritage objects aggregated from 4,000+ US institutions.
      Supports full-text search, field-level queries, boolean and wildcard
      operators, geographic distance queries, date range filtering, and
      faceted aggregations. Returns JSON-LD records containing title, creator,
      date, subject, rights, provider, and thumbnail information. Pagination
      supports up to 100 results per page and batch retrieval of up to 50
      items by ID in a single request.
    humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
    baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
    tags:
      - Items
      - Search
      - Metadata
      - Cultural Heritage
      - Libraries
      - Archives
      - Museums
      - JSON-LD
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
      - type: GettingStarted
        url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
      - type: Authentication
        url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
      - type: GitHubRepository
        url: https://github.com/dpla/api
      - type: OpenAPI
        url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/openapi/openapi.yml

  - aid: dpla:api-key-registration
    name: DPLA API Key Registration
    description: >-
      Self-service API key registration endpoint that issues free access keys
      via email. Developers submit their email address via HTTP POST and
      receive an API key by email. The key is then passed as the api_key
      query parameter or Authorization header on all subsequent Items API
      requests.
    humanURL: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
    baseURL: https://api.dp.la/v2
    tags:
      - Authentication
      - API Keys
      - Registration
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex

common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://dp.la/
  - type: DeveloperPortal
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
  - type: GitHubOrganization
    url: https://github.com/dpla
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/dpla/api
  - type: Blog
    url: https://dp.la/news
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-public-library-of-america
  - type: Twitter
    url: https://twitter.com/dpla
  - type: RateLimits
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/rate-limits/rate-limits.yml
  - type: Plans
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/plans/plans.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/finops/finops.yml
  - type: JSONLDContext
    url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/dpla/refs/heads/main/json-ld/context.jsonld
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: [email protected]

Digital Public Library of America

APIs

DPLA Items API

DPLA API Key Registration

Semantic Vocabularies

context Context

Resources

Sources