The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Dpla listing page.
The Digital Public Library of America — ~50 million digitised items aggregated from the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the Smithsonian, HathiTrust, Internet Archive and hundreds of state libraries, universities and historical societies, searchable in one query.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.
dpla_search_items(...) — search by free text, title, creator, contributing hub, subject, type, named collection or date range.dpla_item(id) — one record in full, including the raw source metadata as the contributing institution wrote it.dpla_collections(q | title) — which named collections inside contributing institutions hold matching material, with an item count each.Platform-backed since 2026-09-18: PLATFORM_DPLA_KEY lives in the encrypted
platform_keys table (no Cloudflare binding) and platformKeyEnv is declared
in workers/gateway/src/pack-manifest.json, so callers need nothing. Pass your
own key as _apiKey to use it instead.
The key is free, instant and self-service — no approval, no plan, no payment:
DPLA emails the key within a minute or two.
Verify the platform key is really set with
curl -s https://gateway.pipeworx.io/manifest.json → dpla.platform_key_set,
never from a file on a laptop.
dpla_collections is the
sourceResource.collection.title facet of this same endpoint.Notes the next person would otherwise rediscover:
/v2/collections no longer exists (fleet #2249, 2026-09-18). DPLA's API
serves exactly three routes — GET /v2/items, GET /v2/items/{id},
POST /v2/api_key/{email} (their source: github.com/dpla/dpla-api,
src/index.ts). api.dp.la/v2/collections answers
404 The requested resource could not be found to a valid key, the same
body it gives no key at all. An earlier version of this pack read that 404
as "bad key" because it had only ever been run without a working one. Named
collections now surface only as the sourceResource.collection.title facet
on the items search (facets=sourceResource.collection.title, facet_size
up to 2,000), which is what dpla_collections is built on.{"error":"invalid_api_key","message":"Invalid or inactive API key."}),
checked before any other parameter is validated. So a 403 says nothing
about whether the rest of the query was well formed, and a 404 says the
path is gone, not that the key is. Verify a key by calling /v2/items with
it, not by reading an error.page_size=0 does not suppress docs — it falls through to DPLA's default
page — so dpla_collections asks for one doc and ignores it.sourceResource.title, sourceResource.creator, provider.name,
sourceResource.subject.name, sourceResource.collection.title,
sourceResource.date.after.list()/one() in the pack handle both;
anything reading d.sourceResource.creator[0] directly will break on some
contributors. sourceResource.collection is an object with title (not
name), so it has its own collectionTitles() reader.isShownAt is the object on the holding institution's own site; DPLA holds
the description, the institution holds the object.Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/dpla/mcp returns the tools in the table
above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx,
discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the
gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a
single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the
pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and
is the authoritative answer for a given day.
This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a
scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via
ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a
second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without
them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth,
connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.
Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/dpla_search_items. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call
for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway
connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.
Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
MIT