The Portal to Texas History API

Overview

The Portal to Texas History provides public access to a number of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to the collections within the system. Below are examples of APIs available for this site that can be used openly by those interested in programmatically accessing data from this system. You do not need to apply for a special key to use these APIs.

For additional information about these APIs or if you have general questions about machine interaction with The Portal to Texas History please contact .

Note that all example URLs below use the same protocol and server name, https://texashistory.unt.edu/ . We only show the URL paths and parameters below to save space.

Note, there are dedicated API pages for each collection and partner within the Portal. Instructions and special features are linked from each collection or partner's 'about' page.

OAI-PMH

The Open Archives Initiative's Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) allows programmatic access to this site's metadata. Two metadata formats are currently supported, the standard oai_dc and the UNT Libraries native metadata format untl.

Below are example URLs which demonstrate some of the standard views of this OAI-PMH repository:

oai/
base URL for OAI-PMH repository
oai/?verb=Identify
Display information about this repository
oai/?verb=ListMetadataFormats
List available metadata formats
oai/?verb=ListSets
List available sets
oai/?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc
Display records in the oai_dc metadata format
oai/?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=untl
Display records in the untl metadata format

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for making image-based collections available in a variety of viewers and applications.

This site implements the IIIF Presentation API for individual collections and partners through their respective API pages.

In addition to the IIIF Collection level Manifest, each object is made available using the IIIF Presentation API. By adding "manifest" to the end of the URL you can access the IIIF JSON that further links to other resources available in the object.

Here is an example URL that will return the JSON file for a IIIF Presentation Manifest.

https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth12412/manifest/

RSS/ATOM Feeds

If you are interested in following along with new additions to the site you can subscribe to one of its feeds. We make use of the ATOM Syndication Format for our feeds.

New Item Feed - feed/

OpenSearch

OpenSearch is a search protocol which enables simple full-text searches to be performed on this site's content. The availability of this protocol is advertised in a LINK header element of the site's HTML template as "Search ," using this OpenSearch Description document.

A human-readable stylesheet has been added to help demonstrate searches via OpenSearch. You can see this interface at the following url.

A custom search can be embedded on your local sites to query The Portal to Texas History. You can copy and paste this code into the page you'd like to feature this search form. Note, you may need to adjust the HTML to match your site's branding/style guidelines.

Thumbnails

Each item in this site has a convenient way of obtaining the thumbnail image. This is accomplished by appending /thumbnail/ to the end of an objects ARK URL. For example:

The response will be application/jpeg containing a thumbnail for the item requested.

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