Download OpenAPI specification:Download
You can access our images using standard International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) APIs. This is how to get the images of digitised works that you’ve found using the Catalogue API. Right now, only our open image collections are available and we support the IIIF Image API. We are working to add the IIIF Presentation, Search and Authentication APIs across all of our digitised collections.
The Image API allows for interoperable delivery of digital images. Simply, the API allows for constructing parameterized URIs for getting a particular region and/or size of an image. This ability to get regions and sizes of the image is what supports delivering thumbnails as well as deep zoom viewing. The image API also specifies a way to get information about the image and what image derivatives and image manipulation features are supported for that image.
Request an image, which may be part of a larger image.
| identifier required | string The identifier of the requested image. This may be an ark, URN, filename, or other identifier. Special characters must be URI encoded. |
| region required | string^full|square|\d,\d,\d,\d|pct:\d,\d,\d,\d$ The region parameter defines the rectangular portion of the full image to be returned. Region can be specified by pixel coordinates |
| size required | string^full|\d*,\d*|pct:\d+$ The size parameter determines the dimensions to which the extracted region is to be scaled. Size can be specified by pixel coordinates |
| rotation required | string^!?\d+\.?\d*$ The rotation parameter specifies mirroring and rotation. Rotation can be specified by any floating point number from 0 to 360. A leading exclamation mark indicates that the image should be mirrored before any rotation is applied. |
| quality required | string Enum: "default" "color" "gray" "bitonal" The quality parameter determines whether the image is delivered in color, grayscale or black and white. |
| format required | string Enum: "jpg" "png" "gif" "webp" The format of the returned image is expressed as an extension at the end of the URI. |
Request information about the image, including characteristics, functionality available, and related services.
| identifier required | string The identifier of the requested image. This may be an ark, URN, filename, or other identifier. Special characters must be URI encoded. |
{- "width": 0,
- "height": 0,
}The search service takes a query, including typically a search term or URI, and potentially filtering further by other properties including the date the annotation was created or last modified, the motivation for the annotation, or the user that created the annotation.
| identifier required | string The identifier of the resource being searched. |
| q | string A space separated list of search terms. The search terms may be either words (to search for within textual bodies) or URIs (to search identities of annotation body resources). The semantics of multiple, space separated terms is server implementation dependent. |
| motivation | string Enum: "painting" "non-painting" "commenting" "describing" "tagging" "linking" A space separated list of motivation terms. If multiple motivations are supplied, an annotation matches the search if any of the motivations are present. |
| date | string <date-time> A space separated list of date ranges. An annotation matches if the date on which it was created falls within any of the supplied date ranges. The dates must be supplied in the ISO8601 format: YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ/YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ. The dates must be expressed in UTC and must be given in the Z based format. |
| user | string A space separated list of URIs that are the identities of users. If multiple users are supplied, an annotation matches the search if any of the users created the annotation. |
{- "id": "string"
}The autocomplete service returns terms that can be added into the q parameter of the related search service, given the first characters of the term.
| identifier required | string The identifier of the resource being searched. |
| min | integer Default: 1 The minimum number of occurrences for a term in the index in order for it to appear within the response. |
{- "id": "string",
- "type": "string",
- "ignored": "string",
}| @id required | string <uri> The base URI of the image. |
| protocol required | string <uri> Value: "http://iiif.io/api/image" The URI which can be used to determine that the document describes an image service which is a version of the IIIF Image API. |
| width required | integer The width in pixels of the full image content, given as an integer. |
| height required | integer The height in pixels of the full image content, given as an integer. |
required | Array of strings or objects A list of profiles, indicated by either a URI or an object describing the features supported. The first entry in the list must be a compliance level URI. |
{- "width": 0,
- "height": 0,
}