Smithsonian Open Access

About this source

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 the source is connected.

What the assistant can do with it

The 6 tools this server offers to Kahubi. The assistant picks the right one for each question.

• smithsonian_search_objects

  Recommended first step for open-ended or topic discovery: free-text search across 14.5 million Smithsonian objects, with optional exact filters.

• smithsonian_list_terms

  Enumerate the valid term vocabulary for an indexed Smithsonian filter field (unit_code, culture, place, date, online_media_type, topic).

• smithsonian_get_object

  Fetch a normalized catalog metadata projection for a Smithsonian object by its record_id (from smithsonian_search_objects results).

• smithsonian_get_media

  Return every CC0 (open-access) image for a Smithsonian object at multiple resolutions.

• smithsonian_browse_category

  Browse 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_related

  Discover objects across Smithsonian collections related to a given anchor object, matched on shared metadata signals - culture, period, object type, named parties, and topic terms.

Good to know

• 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.

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