Nla Trove API

Name: Trove API
Brand: Trove API
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentData EnrichmentData TransformationapiKey14 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Search and retrieve digitised Australian newspapers, gazettes, magazines, books, and biographical records from the National Library of Australia's Trove across 14 endpoints under api.trove.nla.gov.au.

Install Jentic One Beta

Connect the Trove API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Trove API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Two steps, two machines. Install the instance in a safe environment, then register your agent from wherever it runs.

Step 1: Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Trove API.

Run a unified search across every Trove zone through GET /v3/result

Retrieve a specific work by ID through /v3/work/{workId}

Look up an individual newspaper article through /v3/newspaper/{id}

Look up an individual gazette article through /v3/gazette/{id}

GET STARTED

Start building with Trove API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for Trove API, keeping it validated and agent-ready. Trove is the National Library of Australia's discovery service across hundreds of millions of digitised newspapers, gazettes, magazines, books, images, music, archived websites, and biographical records. The API exposes a single unified search endpoint plus targeted lookups for individual works, newspaper articles, gazette articles, magazine titles, lists, people and organisations, and contributor institutions. Authentication is an API key sent in the X-API-KEY header; keys are free to register at trove.nla.gov.au.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Trove API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Historical newspaper research

Researchers and journalists can query Trove's digitised newspaper archive going back to the 19th century. GET /v3/result with category=newspaper and a date range returns ranked matches, and GET /v3/newspaper/{id} retrieves the full article including OCR text. The data is rich enough to support computational text analysis on a single topic across decades.

Call GET /v3/result with q=Federation, category=newspaper, and l-decade=190 then retrieve each article via /v3/newspaper/{id}.

Genealogy and biographical lookup

Genealogy tools can resolve Australian historical persons and organisations through Trove. GET /v3/people/{id} returns the people record; the unified /v3/result search with category=people surfaces matches for a name. Combined with newspaper search, an agent can build a timeline for a historical individual from primary sources.

Call GET /v3/result?q=Henry+Lawson&category=people, then GET /v3/people/{id} for the top result to retrieve the full biographical record.

Library discovery integration

A library website or chatbot can surface relevant Trove content alongside its own catalogue. /v3/result returns matches across all zones (books, images, music, archived websites), and /v3/work/{workId} returns the full work record. The API key in X-API-KEY rate-limits the integration without authenticating individual end users.

Embed GET /v3/result?q={user_query}&category=book&n=10 in a library search box and render the title, contributor, and snippet for each result.

AI agent historical research assistant

An AI agent acting as a research assistant can search Trove, fetch full articles, and summarise results for a user without manual API calls. Through Jentic, the agent searches by intent and Jentic returns the matching Trove endpoint with the X-API-KEY attached server-side. Free Trove keys keep the integration cost-neutral while protecting per-key rate limits.

Search Jentic for 'search Trove', load GET /v3/result, and execute it with q=Eureka+Stockade&category=newspaper&n=20.

Key Endpoints

14 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for trove api, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/v3/result

Unified search across every Trove zone

GET

/v3/work/{workId}

Retrieve a single work record

GET

/v3/newspaper/{id}

Retrieve a single newspaper article with OCR text

GET

/v3/newspaper/titles

Find newspaper titles with metadata

GET

/v3/gazette/{id}

Retrieve a single gazette article

GET

/v3/people/{id}

Resolve a person or organisation record

GET

/v3/list/{id}

Retrieve a user-curated Trove list

GET

/v3/contributor

List Trove contributor institutions

GET

/v3/result

Unified search across every Trove zone

GET

/v3/work/{workId}

Retrieve a single work record

GET

/v3/newspaper/{id}

Retrieve a single newspaper article with OCR text

GET

/v3/newspaper/titles

Find newspaper titles with metadata

GET

/v3/gazette/{id}

Retrieve a single gazette article

Why Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Trove X-API-KEY values are stored encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents call /v3/result and lookup endpoints via Jentic, which attaches the header server-side; raw keys never enter the agent's chat context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent (e.g. 'search Trove for newspaper articles' or 'look up a person on Trove') and Jentic returns the matching endpoint with its parameter schema.

Time to first call

Direct Trove integration: a few hours to read docs and wire search plus lookups. Through Jentic: under 30 minutes — search, load schema, execute.

FAQs

Specific to using Trove API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for Trove API?

The National Library of Australia publishes Trove documentation but does not ship a maintained OpenAPI specification for direct download. Jentic generates and maintains this spec so that AI agents and developers can call Trove API via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does the Trove API use?

Trove uses an API key sent in the X-API-KEY header. Keys are free to register at trove.nla.gov.au. Through Jentic, the key is held in the vault and attached server-side, so agents never see the raw value.

Can I retrieve the full text of a digitised newspaper article?

Yes. GET /v3/newspaper/{id} returns the article record including OCR-derived article text where available, ready for downstream text analysis or summarisation.

What are the rate limits for the Trove API?

Trove enforces per-key rate limits and asks heavy users to register a project key. Exact thresholds are published at trove.nla.gov.au. If a key exceeds the limit the API returns HTTP 429 — back off and retry with a longer interval.

How do I search Trove through Jentic?

Run pip install jentic, search Jentic for 'search Trove', and load GET /v3/result. Provide q, category (newspaper, book, people, image, list, magazine, music), and pagination parameters; Jentic attaches the X-API-KEY header automatically.

Is the Trove API free?

Yes. Trove is a free public service from the National Library of Australia. There is no charge for the API key or for normal usage; key registration and Terms of Use apply.