Documentation > Workflows & Code > Explore Metadata > NHGIS

Explore IPUMS NHGIS Metadata

Below we provide examples in curl showing how to work with our API to explore NHGIS metadata.

If you are an R or Python user, please note that we also provide language-native client libraries to make it easier to work with the IPUMS API using those languages.

Get your key from https://account.ipums.org/api_keys. Make sure to replace 'MY_KEY' (all caps) in the snippet below with your key.

Load Libraries and Set Key

export KEY=MY_KEY # set the MY_KEY environment variable using bash shell

Usage of the IPUMS API will vary depending on whether you are requesting datasets or time series tables. See the following sections for next steps:

IPUMS NHGIS Dataset Metadata
IPUMS NHGIS Time Series Metadata
IPUMS NHGIS Shapefile Metadata