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Data Portal

Explore and download the Museum’s research and collections data.
  1. Namai
  2. Apie
  3. Download and API

Download and API

Data can be downloaded via:

  1. The download button on dataset or resource pages;
  2. The download button on the search page;
  3. The vds_download_queue API endpoint.

The search and API download options allow you to download the results of a cross-dataset search, so you can download records from multiple datasets and resources in a single file.

You do not need to provide any details to download our data. Giving your email address is entirely optional and is only used to notify you when your download is ready.

Application Programming Interface (API)

If you want to use data from the portal in your own software or applications, you can access it using the API. You do not need a key to use most features of the API.

The base URL for the API is: https://data.nhm.ac.uk/lt/api/3

The API provides a RESTful interface, returning data in JSON format.

API Documentation

Our API is not yet fully documented. Most methods are documented in the CKAN API guide, and we have partial documentation for our search API.

API limits

Please try to follow these guidelines when using our API or programmatically traversing the site:

  • Use common sense and be courteous to other users
  • Cache your results wherever possible
  • Keep your request rate below ~20 requests per second
  • Respect the robots.txt
  • Provide a user agent with your requests; this is both so we can contact you if there's a problem and because we occasionally have to block generic user agents so your requests may be rejected

We reserve the right to suspend API access if you continuously make excessive requests or otherwise cause issues.

Please see our terms and conditions for more information.