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OpenLibrary Book Scraper — Metadata, ISBNs, Authors, Subjects

Scrape book metadata from the free OpenLibrary API. No API key, no rate-limit token, no auth wall. Four input modes: search queries, ISBN lookups, subject browse, author works. Output JSON or CSV.

Built for: library data builds, reading-list automation, ISBN enrichment, book recommendation datasets, academic citation enrichment.

What this actor does (honest scope, verified against src/main.js)

Calls these public OpenLibrary endpoints under the hood:

Sets User-Agent: ApifyOpenLibraryScraper/1.0. Inserts polite delays between requests: 200ms after each work-description fetch, 300ms before each ISBN/subject/author lookup, 500ms between search-mode pages. If includeDescription=true (default), search-mode and isbn-mode fire one extra /works/{key}.json per book to pull the description text — slower but richer. Subject-mode and author-mode never fetch the work-description endpoint — they read whatever description is already in the listing payload.

Input parameters

You can mix all four modes in a single run. Each output record carries a source field telling you which mode produced it (search:<query>, isbn:<n>, subject:<s>, author:<a>).

Output schema (varies by source mode — fields differ deliberately)

Records from different modes carry different field sets. This is by design — OpenLibrary returns richer metadata for search results than for ISBN / subject / author endpoints.

search: mode (22 base fields, +description with includeDescription, +2 metadata = up to 25)

{
"title":"Foundation",
"authors":["Isaac Asimov"],
"authorKeys":["OL26320A"],
"firstPublishYear":1951,
"publishYears":[1951,1952,1955,1962,1974],
"isbn":"9780553293357",
"allIsbns":["9780553293357","9780553382570","..."],
"subjects":["Science fiction","Galactic empire","..."],
"publishers":["Bantam Spectra","Doubleday","..."],
"languages":["eng"],
"pageCount":244,
"editionCount":142,
"coverUrl":"https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/9261361-L.jpg",
"openLibraryKey":"/works/OL46828W",
"openLibraryUrl":"https://openlibrary.org/works/OL46828W",
"ebookAccess":"borrowable",
"hasFulltext":true,
"ratingsAverage":4.12,
"ratingsCount":1284,
"wantToRead":8421,
"currentlyReading":412,
"alreadyRead":6203,
"description":"In the waning days of a future Galactic Empire...",
"source":"search:foundation",
"scrapedAt":"2026-04-29T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Field caps in search-mode: allIsbns truncated to first 10, subjects truncated to first 20, publishers truncated to first 5. pageCount is number_of_pages_median (median across editions, not the specific-edition page count).

isbn: mode (10 base fields, +description+subjects if includeDescription=true)

title, isbn, publishers (uncapped), publishDate, pageCount (specific-edition number_of_pages, NOT median), coverUrl, openLibraryKey, openLibraryUrl, source, scrapedAt. With includeDescription=true, adds description and subjects (uncapped). Description fetch is wrapped in a silent try/catch — on failure, both description and subjects are simply absent (no error field, no retry).

subject: mode (10 fields)

title, authors (array of names — different shape than search-mode's authorKeys), coverUrl, openLibraryKey, openLibraryUrl, editionCount, firstPublishYear, subject, source, scrapedAt. No ratings, no ISBN, no description in this mode — that's an OpenLibrary /subjects/ endpoint limitation, not ours. Server hard-caps to 50 records regardless of maxBooksPerSource.

author: mode (7 base fields, +description if includeDescription=true)

title, authors (1-element array with the resolved author name), authorKey (singular — different from search-mode's plural authorKeys), openLibraryKey, openLibraryUrl, covers (capped to first 3 cover URLs), source, scrapedAt. With includeDescription=true, adds description IF the author-works payload already contains it (no extra API call — purely best-effort). Server hard-caps to 50 works regardless of maxBooksPerSource.

Field-name asymmetry across modes: search-mode emits authorKeys (plural array) + coverUrl (single URL); author-mode emits authorKey (singular string) + covers (array of up to 3); subject-mode and isbn-mode emit neither. If you join across modes, normalize these explicitly.

Operational caveats

• ⚠️ Outer try/catch wraps the entire 4-mode for-loop (src/main.js lines 57-222). ISBN, subject, and author loops have inner try/catch so individual lookup failures don't halt their batch. BUT search-mode does NOT have inner protection — a single search-API failure (e.g. transient HTTP 500, network blip) kills the run mid-stream and skips ALL remaining search queries, ISBN lookups, subject browses, and author lookups. Run problematic queries in isolation if dropout matters.
• No retry / no proxy. Single fetch() per URL. Heavy bursts may eventually trigger OpenLibrary's polite-use ceiling (~100 req/min unofficial); the actor will surface that as a thrown HTTP error.
• Description-fetch silent-empty. When includeDescription=true and the work-page fetch fails, description is set to empty string (search-mode) or absent (isbn-mode) — no error is logged per book.
• Subject slug transform is naive. Input "Science Fiction" → slug "science_fiction". Special characters beyond letters/spaces are URL-encoded but not slug-normalized; subjects like "René Magritte's books" will likely 404.

What this actor does NOT do

• No reading-progress / personal-list scraping — OpenLibrary doesn't expose individual users' lists.
• No full-text book content — only metadata + descriptions. Read free books at openlibrary.org or via Internet Archive.
• No price comparison — OpenLibrary is metadata-only, not a bookstore.
• No deduplication across modes — if you search "Foundation" and lookup ISBN 9780553293357, you'll get 2 records. Dedupe by openLibraryKey post-run if needed.
• No incremental crawl / cursor state — each run starts fresh from page 1.
• No author disambiguation — first match wins.

When this stops being enough

If you need book full-text → use Internet Archive. If you need real-time bookstore prices → write a separate Amazon/Bookshop scraper. If you need annotated bibliographies → look at Goodreads (no public API since 2020, harder).

Custom builds — pilot tiers

This actor runs on Apify's standard compute. If you need a custom variant — search-mode-only with retry+backoff, ISBN-bulk with deduplication, subject browse paginated past the 50-cap (via search workaround), author-key direct lookup, hourly cron, Slack alerts on new releases — three tiers:

• Pilot — $97 · 1 actor, basic config, 7-day support. Good for one-off "top 200 books in subject X" via search + subject hybrid.
• Standard — $297 · custom actor + Slack/email alerts on results, 30-day support. Most reading-list / catalog-enrichment projects fit here.
• Premium — $797 · custom actor + dashboard + 90-day support + 1 modification round. For ongoing pipelines (weekly new-release feed, ISBN-stream enrichment, author-tracking dashboards).

Email: spinov001@gmail.com — drop the input shape and the schema you need; quote within 48h.

Proof of work: 31 published Apify scrapers (78 total in portfolio) — Trustpilot 949 runs, Reddit 80+, Google News 43, Glassdoor 37, Email Extractor 36+. Recently delivered a paid 3-article series for a client in the proxy industry ($150).

More tips: t.me/scraping_ai · blog.spinov.online

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Disclaimer

Scrapes the publicly accessible OpenLibrary API endpoints. Respects polite delays (200-500ms between requests). Not affiliated with the Internet Archive or OpenLibrary.

Honest disclosure: search-mode 22 base fields (up to 25 with description + 2 metadata fields), isbn-mode 10 base, subject-mode 10 fields, author-mode 7 base. Subject and author endpoints server-capped at 50 records regardless of maxBooksPerSource. Outer try/catch — single search-API failure halts the entire run. Single-attempt fetch, no retry/no proxy. Author-mode uses limit=1 for disambiguation — first match wins.