# US National Archives Catalog

> Archival descriptions, Digitized records for United States. Access: Public API, key needed. Terms checked November 1, 2026.

- Slug: us-national-archives
- Page: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/sources/us-national-archives
- JSON: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/v1/sources/us-national-archives
- Records: Archival descriptions, Digitized records
- Places: United States
- Years: Not stated by the source
- Access method: api
- Key required: yes
- Rate limit: Default 10,000 queries per month per API key. A key that goes over is blocked until the first of the next month. Higher limits are granted case by case.
- Status: down
- Review: verified, checked by hand on 2026-11-01
- Homepage: https://catalog.archives.gov/
- API docs: https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/help/api
- Terms: https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/help/api

## Notes

Catalog API v2 returns archival descriptions, authority records, digital object metadata and extracted OCR text as JSON. Every request needs a key. The terms say not to scrape the API or download the whole catalog through it (use the AWS Open Data copy instead), not to cache or store returned content, and to show a notice that NARA does not endorse the service. robots.txt on catalog.archives.gov disallows every path for all agents, so the health probe reads the API page on www.archives.gov instead. On the day of review that page answered curl but returned 502 to the probe, so the status may read down while the API itself is fine.

## Evidence

- https://www.archives.gov/research/catalog/help/api
- https://catalog.archives.gov/api/v2/api-docs/
- https://catalog.archives.gov/robots.txt

## Status

Down at the last check, 2026-11-01 22:02 UTC. HTTP 502 in 1053 ms. Server error (502). One check a day.

The Lineage research API is not live. This file describes a catalog entry only.