Harvard University (harvard)

Harvard University (QS World 2025 #4) maintains a substantial public developer footprint across several units. Its most prominent fully public APIs are the Harvard Art Museums API and the Harvard Library LibraryCloud / Open Metadata API. HUIT operates a central API Portal (HarvardKey-gated) for administrative APIs, and the DASH repository exposes an open OAI-PMH feed.

URL: Visit APIs.json URL

Run: Capabilities Using Naftiko

Type

• x-type: Index (Consumer / 3rd-Party)

Tags

• Education, Higher Education, University, Research, Libraries, Museums, Open Metadata, OAI-PMH

APIs

• Harvard Art Museums API — REST/JSON collections data (21 resources) with IIIF. Base https://api.harvardartmuseums.org. Free, non-commercial, API key required. Docs
• LibraryCloud API (Open Metadata) — 12.7M+ bib records as MODS/Dublin Core; public Item API needs no key. Base https://api.lib.harvard.edu/v2/items.json. Docs
• DASH OAI-PMH — Open-access repository (58,000+ works) metadata harvesting. Base https://dash.harvard.edu/server/oai/request.
• Harvard API Portal (HUIT) — Courses, Person, Dining, Zoom, Library Catalog, GenAI; HarvardKey-gated. Catalog

Plans, Rate Limits, FinOps

• Plans — Free/open public APIs; HarvardKey-gated administrative APIs.
• RateLimits — Art Museums ~2,500 calls/day; harvest open feeds politely.
• FinOps — Non-commercial; no usage-based API billing.

Timestamps

• Created: 2026-06-03
• Modified: 2026-06-03

Common Properties

• Website
• Developer / Data
• GitHub
• Status

Notes

• Two genuinely open public APIs verified live: Harvard Art Museums (free key) and LibraryCloud Item API (no key, returned live MODS JSON). DASH OAI-PMH returned valid OAI-PMH XML. See review.yml.
• HUIT API Portal base URLs are gated behind HarvardKey + app registration; only the human-readable OpenAPI doc pages are public.
• The correct library GitHub org is harvard-library (harvardlibrary does not exist).

Maintainers

FN: Kin Lane

Email: kin@apievangelist.com