Interfaces

IIIF APIs

You can integrate the contents of the Bavarian State Library, which are provided in the IIIF standard, directly into web offers via the APIs (Application Programming Interface) without having to download and maintain the data yourself.

Please note: Commercial use of our digital copies may be subject to approval and fees. For more information on usage and possible fees, please refer to our FAQ.

All the interfaces described in the following provide their responses with the Access Control Allow-Origin: * header, making it possible to use provided data directly in client-side JavaScript applications. The Bavarian State Library provides the IIIF Presentation API and the IIIF Image API. The former one delivers so called manifests of digitized objects in JSON-LD format. Inside the manifests Image API endpoints for each facsimile image are referenced. Each image endpoint provides an info.json file, providing information about the image, like the maximum available resolution. Further more a number of image manipulation steps are available, that are executed on our server farm, before the result is delivered to the client. In addition to the facsimile image, the OCR text of a page, if available, is also accessible via the manifest. You can find the corresponding link under the seeAlso key of a facsimile canvas in the manifest.

Addresses of the IIIF API endpoints

Image API

https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/image/v2/{image_id}/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/{quality}.{format}
Example of an image file:
https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/image/v2/bsb00109992_00001/full/full/0/default.jpg

https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/image/v2/{image_id}/info.json
Example of an info.json file:
https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/image/v2/bsb00103155_00013/info.json

Underlying specification: https://iiif.io/api/image/2.1/

Presentation API

URL IIIF manifest: https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/presentation/v2/{object_id}/manifest
Examples of a manifest:
https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/presentation/v2/bsb00012345/manifest
https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/presentation/v2/bsb00130380_00157_u001/manifest

Underlying specification: https://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.1/

URL top collection: https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/iiif/presentation/v2/collection/top

Underlying specification: https://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.1/#collection

OCR API

https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/ocr/{object_id}/{page_num}
Example of an OCR XML file:
https://api.digitale-sammlungen.de/ocr/bsb00000001/00010

Visit us on Github. There you can find opensource IIIF software developed by the MDZ.

Bavarian Digital Repository

The Bavarian Digital Repository (BDR) is developed to be a freely accessible interface for harvesting metadata about all digital representations produced by or in cooperation with the Bavarian State Library. BDR conforms to the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

RSS Feed

The RSS feed of the Munich DigitiZation Center presents the 50 most recent additions to the Digital Collections in the order in which they are made available online.