Ghent University

---
aid: ghent
name: Ghent University
description: >-
  Ghent University (Universiteit Gent, UGent) is a major public research
  university in Ghent, Belgium, ranked #169 in the QS World University Rankings
  2025. Its public developer footprint centers on the Ghent University Library:
  the Academic Bibliography (biblio.ugent.be) exposes a documented REST search
  API plus OAI-PMH, SRU, unAPI and bulk data dumps under an ODbL license, and
  the library catalog (lib.ugent.be) offers OAI-PMH, SRU, IIIF and OpenSearch
  interfaces. The university maintains official GitHub organizations (ugent,
  ugent-library), and the student computer-science group Zeus WPI publishes the
  open Hydra Resto API for student-restaurant menu data. There is no single
  centralized, gateway-style institutional developer portal; APIs are documented
  per service.
type: Index
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/ghent/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
tags:
  - Education
  - Higher Education
  - University
  - Research
  - Library
  - Open Data
  - Belgium
  - Europe
created: '2026-06-03'
modified: '2026-06-03'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - aid: ghent:biblio
    name: Ghent University Academic Bibliography API
    description: >-
      The Academic Bibliography (Biblio) provides programmatic access to UGent
      research publication metadata via a REST search API (JSON/JSONP), an
      OAI-PMH 2.0 harvesting endpoint, an SRU 1.1 search service using CQL, a
      unAPI discovery service, and daily bulk data dumps (CSV, JSON, MODS) under
      the Open Database License (ODbL).
    humanURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
    baseURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication
    tags: [ Research, Publications, Bibliography, Open Data, OAI-PMH, SRU, Library ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
  - aid: ghent:biblio-oai
    name: Ghent University Academic Bibliography OAI-PMH
    description: >-
      OAI-PMH 2.0 metadata harvesting endpoint for the UGent Academic
      Bibliography, supporting Identify, ListMetadataFormats and ListRecords
      verbs for full or selective harvesting of publication records.
    humanURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
    baseURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/oai
    tags: [ OAI-PMH, Research, Publications, Metadata, Harvesting ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
  - aid: ghent:biblio-sru
    name: Ghent University Academic Bibliography SRU
    description: >-
      SRU 1.1 search/retrieve service for the UGent Academic Bibliography using
      Contextual Query Language (CQL), returning XML records for publication
      searches with sorting support.
    humanURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
    baseURL: https://biblio.ugent.be/sru
    tags: [ SRU, CQL, Research, Publications, Search ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://biblio.ugent.be/doc/api
  - aid: ghent:library-catalog
    name: Ghent University Library Catalog Interfaces
    description: >-
      The Ghent University Library catalog (lib.ugent.be) exposes machine
      interfaces for its collections, including OAI-PMH metadata harvesting, SRU
      search with CQL, IIIF (Presentation API v2) for digitized images, and
      OpenSearch for search-result feeds. Per-item pages include a developer
      section listing available formats; metadata is published under the Open
      Database License.
    humanURL: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog
    tags: [ Library, Catalog, OAI-PMH, SRU, IIIF, OpenSearch, Open Data ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://lib.ugent.be/catalog
  - aid: ghent:hydra-resto
    name: Hydra Resto API (Zeus WPI)
    description: >-
      Open JSON API published by Zeus WPI, the computer-science student working
      group at Ghent University, powering the Hydra student app. The Resto API
      (v2.0) serves UGent student-restaurant locations, daily menus, sandwiches,
      salads and allergen information. Community-maintained, not an official
      university service.
    humanURL: https://github.com/ZeusWPI/hydra/blob/master/api-resto-02.md
    baseURL: https://hydra.ugent.be/api/2.0/resto
    tags: [ Mobile, Student, Menu, Open Data, Community ]
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://github.com/ZeusWPI/hydra/blob/master/api-resto-02.md
      - type: GitHub
        url: https://github.com/ZeusWPI/hydra
common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://www.ugent.be/en
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/ugent
  - type: SourceCode
    url: https://github.com/ugent-library
  - type: LinkedIn
    url: https://www.linkedin.com/school/ghent-university/
  - type: Plans
    url: plans/ghent-plans-pricing.yml
  - type: RateLimits
    url: rate-limits/ghent-rate-limits.yml
  - type: FinOps
    url: finops/ghent-finops.yml
  - type: Review
    url: review.yml
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: [email protected]