About Smithsonian Open Access
Search 5M+ records across the Smithsonian units (natural history, American history, art, air and space, anthropology), browse by category, fetch object details and media, and find related objects. Most records carry CC0 images.
Questions you can ask Smithsonian Open Access
Type them into Kahubi’s chat once Smithsonian Open Access is connected.
“Find Smithsonian objects related to the 1918 influenza pandemic with free-to-use images.”
What comes back: Objects with museum unit, date, description and a CC0 image link where available.
“Which meteorite specimens does the National Museum of Natural History hold from Antarctica?”
What comes back: Specimen records with catalogue number, collection details and links to the object pages.
Smithsonian Open Access MCP tools
The 6 tools the Smithsonian Open Access server offers to Kahubi. The assistant picks the right one for each question.
smithsonian_search_objectsRecommended first step for open-ended or topic discovery: free-text search across 14.5 million Smithsonian objects, with optional exact filters.
smithsonian_list_termsEnumerate the valid term vocabulary for an indexed Smithsonian filter field (unit_code, culture, place, date, online_media_type, topic).
smithsonian_get_objectFetch a normalized catalog metadata projection for a Smithsonian object by its record_id (from smithsonian_search_objects results).
smithsonian_get_mediaReturn every CC0 (open-access) image for a Smithsonian object at multiple resolutions.
smithsonian_browse_categoryBrowse Smithsonian objects within one exact category - a single museum (mode "museum"), culture, indexed date term (mode "period"), object type (mode "medium"), or subject term...
smithsonian_find_relatedDiscover objects across Smithsonian collections related to a given anchor object, matched on shared metadata signals - culture, period, object type, named parties, and topic terms.
Using Smithsonian Open Access in Kahubi
- Community server. An open-source server maintained by the MCP community. Kahubi tests it with live queries before listing it and health-checks it regularly.
- Cited, checkable answers. Results are treated as retrieved material and cited with the source’s own identifiers, so you can open every record the answer relied on.
- Your files stay private. Only the search the assistant writes for your question is sent to Smithsonian Open Access.
More archives & heritage sources
- Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives)Search AI-transcribed handwritten records from the 1600s onward, the national archive catalogue, church books, court records and more.
- Kansallisarkisto (National Archives of Finland)Full-text search of 7.8 million transcribed pages: Finnish court records 1610–1931, crown bailiff accounts and medieval charters.
- EuropeanaSearch 50+ million digitised items from European museums, libraries and archives.
- Trove (National Library of Australia)Australian newspapers, books, images, maps and archives from the National Library of Australia.
- Libris (Kungliga biblioteket)The Swedish national union catalogue: books, journals, theses, maps and music in Swedish libraries.
- Kubhist historical newspapers (Språkbanken Korp)Full-text concordance search in digitised Swedish newspapers 1645–1926, by title and decade.