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.

Use for: Search Trove for newspaper articles mentioning 'Federation' before 1901, Retrieve the full record of a Trove work by ID, Get the text of a specific Trove newspaper article, Find newspaper titles published in Sydney

Not supported: Does not handle library lending, digitisation requests, or user-account management - use for Trove search and retrieval of digitised newspapers, gazettes, magazines, books, people, and lists only.

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.

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://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fnla.gov.au%2Ftrove" | sh

Step 2: Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL "https://jentic.com/install.sh?src=apis&api=%2Fapis%2Fnla.gov.au%2Ftrove" | 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}

Find newspaper, gazette, or magazine titles with metadata through /titles endpoints

GET STARTED

Start building with Trove API

Explore with Jentic One

View OpenAPI Document

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

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

Why Jentic?

What agents get from Jentic-routed access to this vendor.

Setup

Wiring the Trove API by hand means adding its API key header, building requests against its host (https://api.trove.nla.gov.au), and handling its search parameters yourself. Through Jentic you install once, import the Trove API from the API Directory, store the API key once, and your agent calls it.

Permission scoping

Trove is a read-only search and retrieval API, so scope by operation: limit the agent to the calls it needs, such as running a search or fetching a newspaper article, and leave out lists or contributor lookups unless you add them. You choose the operations it may call.

Credential isolation

Your Trove API key is stored once, encrypted, by your own Jentic One instance and injected at execution time. It never enters the agent's prompt, logs, or context.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic by intent such as 'search digitised newspapers' or 'fetch a work by id', and Jentic returns the matching Trove operation with its input schema so the agent calls the right endpoint without browsing the reference docs.

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 with Jentic One, the self-hosted execution layer.

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.

Can I limit what my agent is allowed to do with the Trove API?

Yes. Because you run Jentic One yourself, your own rules decide which Trove operations the agent may call and which API key it uses. Since Trove is read-only, you scope by operation: allow just the calls the agent needs, such as running a search via GET /v3/result or fetching an article via GET /v3/newspaper/{id}, while leaving out list retrieval or contributor lookups unless you explicitly add them. The Trove API key stays with your instance and is attached at execution time, so the agent can only reach the endpoints you permit.