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Open Library Scraper

Scrape Open Library — Internet Archive's open catalog of 50M+ books. Search by title / author / subject, fetch by ISBN or work ID, get full bibliographic metadata, cover images, edition counts, and full-text availability. HTTP-only via the public openlibrary.org JSON API. No auth, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Four modes: search, byIsbn, byWorkIds, byAuthorIds
• Universal IDs: OpenLibrary work IDs, ISBN-10, ISBN-13, author IDs
• Filters: publication year range, min edition count, language, full-text availability
• Cover images: auto-builds CDN URLs at S/M/L sizes
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per book

• workId — OpenLibrary work key (e.g. OL27482W)
• title, subtitle, description
• firstPublishYear, editionCount
• authors[], primaryAuthor, authorIds[]
• subjects[], subjectPlaces[], subjectPeople[], subjectTimes[]
• languages[] — 3-letter ISO codes
• isbn10[], isbn13[] — capped at 5 each
• coverUrl — large cover via covers.openlibrary.org CDN
• hasFulltext, publicScan, ebookAccess
• openLibraryUrl
• recordType: "book", scrapedAt

Input

Example: classic fantasy with full-text scans

{
"mode":"search",
"searchQuery":"fantasy",
"publishYearMin":1900,
"publishYearMax":2000,
"minEditionCount":10,
"includeFulltextOnly":true
}

Example: lookup by ISBN

{
"mode":"byIsbn",
"isbns":["9780261103573","9780261102217","0-261-10357-X"]
}

Example: all of an author's works

{
"mode":"byAuthorIds",
"authorIds":["OL26320A"],
"maxItems":200
}

Use cases

• Library systems — bulk-import metadata from Open Library by ISBN
• Edtech — discover books by subject for curriculum design
• Content discovery — find books by author / subject / time period
• Recommendation engines — feed Open Library subject taxonomy into your recommender
• Publishing intelligence — track edition counts to gauge popularity
• Academic research — bulk-export a subject's bibliographic record

FAQ

What's Open Library? An open, editable, library-grade catalog from Internet Archive. ~50M books, ~10M authors, free for any use. See openlibrary.org.

Is there a rate limit? Generous; no documented hard cap for normal scraping. The actor uses small delays to be polite.

What are work IDs vs edition IDs? A "work" is the abstract concept of a book (e.g. "The Hobbit"); an "edition" is a specific publication of it (paperback 1995 ed.). The actor returns work-level records by default.

Why are some ISBN lists capped at 5? Popular works have hundreds of editions, each with its own ISBN. We keep the first 5 for table compactness; full lists are available via per-edition queries.

How do subjects, subjectPlaces, subjectPeople, subjectTimes differ? Open Library's subject taxonomy is faceted: regular subjects (Fantasy), geographic places (Middle-earth), people (Bilbo Baggins), and time periods (Third Age).

What's ebookAccess? borrowable (Internet Archive lending), printdisabled (only for users with print disabilities), or no_ebook (text not digitized).

Can I get cover images at other sizes? The actor emits the L (large) URL. To get S or M, swap the suffix in the URL: -L.jpg → -M.jpg or -S.jpg.

How fresh is the data? Daily — Open Library re-indexes nightly from edits, ISBN ingestion, and Internet Archive's MARC import pipeline.