search the us national archives (nara) online catalog for records matching a query

domain: catalog.archives.gov · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Steps

  1. Request a Catalog API key by emailing NARA's Catalog API contact with your name and email (choose read-only or read-write)
  2. Send GET https://catalog.archives.gov/api/v2/records/search?q=<query> with header 'x-api-key: YOUR_KEY'
  3. Add optional field/sort parameters to narrow results (full schema documented via the v2 Swagger docs)
  4. Parse the JSON response for record metadata (titles, scope notes, date ranges, creator info) and digitized-record links to scanned images

Known gotchas

Related routes

Search a library catalog using the SRU searchRetrieve protocol with a CQL query
loc.gov · 4 steps · unrated
Search Library of Congress digital collections via the loc.gov JSON API
loc.gov · 4 steps · unrated
search uk national archives (discovery) catalogue descriptions via api
discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk · 5 steps · unrated

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