National Archives for Developers

The National Archives promotes the innovative application of agency data in public and private sectors. Archives.gov/developer connects citizen developers with the tool they need to unlock government data.

Have suggestions, ideas, or questions? Please give us feedback about these resources at the US National Archives GitHub account.

GitHub

• The National Archives on GitHub
  Makes available code related to the work of the U.S. National Archives.
  
  
• The Federal Register on GitHub
  Makes available code related to the Federal Register. Learn more about resources available to develoeprs on the Federal Register developer hub.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

• National Archives Catalog API
  The National Archives Catalog API is a read-write web API for the online catalog for the National Archives. This API can be used to perform fielded search of archival metadata, bulk export of metadata and digital media, and post contributions to records. The dataset includes archival descriptions, authorities, digital media, web pages, and public contributions (such as tags and transcriptions).
  
  
• The Federal Register API
  FederalRegister.gov is a fully open source project. The source code for the main site is available on GitHub, as well as the chef cookbooks for maintaining the servers, and the WordPress themes and configuration.
  
  
• Executive Orders from 1994 to 2012
  The President of the United States manages the operations of the Executive branch of Government through Executive orders. After the President signs an executive order, the White House sends it to the Office of Federal Register (OFR). The OFR numbers each order consecutively as part of a series, and publishes it in the daily Federal Register shortly after receipt. This data is available as as an interactive dataset and API through Data.gov.
  
  
• Digital Public Library of American (DPLA) API
  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a universal digital public library, providing a single online access point for digital collections containing America's cultural, historical and scientific heritage. The National Archives participates as a leading content provider and has contributed 1.9 million digital images to the DPLA, including our nation’s founding documents, photos from the Documerica Photography Project of the 1970’s, World War II posters, Mathew Brady Civil War photographs, and a wide variety of documents that define our human and civil rights. The DPLA API allows you to build applications and tools for enhanced learning and content discovery. More information available at: http://dp.la/info/developers/
  
  
• Flickr API
  The National Archives has made more than 10,000 images of records available on Flickr. As a participating institution in the Commons on Flickr, the National Archives makes available images of documents, photographs, and other records with no known copy restrictions. These records can be accessed through the Flickr API.

Datasets

• Code of Federal Regulations
  This dataset contains the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in XML format. The CFR is the codification of the general and permanent regulations of the Federal Government published in the Federal Register.
• Federal Register
  This dataset contains the daily Federal Register in XML format. The Federal Register is the official legal newspaper of the United States Government.
• Archival Descriptions from the Online Catalog
  This dataset contains information of permanent holdings of the Federal Government in the custody of the National Archives in XML format.
• Organization Descriptions from the Online Catalog
  The dataset contains the organization descriptions from the Online Catalog in XML format.
• United States Government Manual
  The U.S. Government Manual is the official handbook of the U.S. Government and available in XML format.
• Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States
  This is the official public Presidential writings, addresses, and remarks in XML format.
• Executive Orders of the Presidents of the United States
  The dataset contains the official documents through which the President of the United States manages the operations of the Federal Government in CSV format, and also as a combined interactive dataset, and API.

Crowdsourcing Tools

• Transcribr
  This Drupal distribution includes all modules and themes required to emulate the National Archives Transcription Pilot Project, which allows the public to transcribe historical documents to make them more accessible to the public.

Digitization Software Tools

• AVI-MetaEdit
  The software gives you ability to perform various metadata editing for AVI files. You can use the tool to embed, edit, import, and export metadata. This tool is made available on GitHub.
• File Analyzer
  The File Analyzer performs filename validation and statistical analysis for file data like checksum and file size.
• MediaInfo
  This tool offers a GUI to display stream information for video and audio files. It also provides customization for data display and export formats.
• Video Frame Analyzer
  This software automates the quality control process for digitized video files. It also provides analysis for video frame level metadata.