Open Library Book Scraper

Search Open Library books, ISBN records, subjects, ebooks, and public author records through the public Open Library APIs, returning normalized catalog metadata, author names, editions, covers, ratings, ebook access, Internet Archive IDs, and author summaries.

Content extractionv0.1.1~1 credit/runSource on GitHub

Overview

Open Library Book Scraper gives agents a structured route into Open Library's public book and author APIs. Search by keyword, title, author, subject, ISBN, or ebook availability, or switch to author mode for public author records. The tool normalizes Open Library JSON into compact catalog rows with work keys, Open Library URLs, titles, author names and keys, first publication years, edition counts, ISBNs, publishers, languages, subjects, cover URLs, ratings, ebook access flags, full-text availability, Internet Archive identifiers, page counts, and author search summaries. It is designed for book discovery, bibliography building, catalog enrichment, reading-list automation, library research, publishing workflows, and agent pipelines that need public book metadata without scraping Open Library HTML.

Last validated: Jul 3, 2026

Playground

Input

isbnstring

ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 value, with or without hyphens.

mode"books" | "authors"default: "books"

Search Open Library book/catalog records or public author records.

pageintegerdefault: 1

One-based result page.

sort"relevance" | "new" | "old"default: "relevance"

Book search sort order.

limitintegerdefault: 10

Maximum records to return.

querystring

Keyword query for books or authors.

titlestring

Book title query for books mode.

authorstring

Author name query for books mode, or author query fallback in authors mode.

subjectstring

Open Library subject query such as science fiction, entrepreneurship, or children's literature.

ebooks_onlybooleandefault: false

Filter books mode to records where Open Library reports full-text availability.

Output

modestringrequired

Mode used for this run

pageinteger

Result page used

booksobject[]

Normalized Open Library book records

countintegerrequired

Number of returned records

querystring

Query summary

authorsobject[]

Normalized Open Library author records

source_urlstringrequired

Open Library API URL fetched

total_matchesinteger

Total matches reported by Open Library

Examples

tolkien-books

{
  "mode": "books",
  "limit": 2,
  "query": "lord of the rings"
}

tolkien-authors

{
  "mode": "authors",
  "limit": 2,
  "query": "tolkien"
}

Use cases

Book discovery and bibliography building

Search by topic, title, author, or ISBN and return normalized Open Library work rows for reading lists, citations, or catalog review.

Catalog and CMS enrichment

Attach Open Library URLs, edition counts, cover image URLs, publisher names, languages, subjects, ratings, and ISBNs to book records.

Author and ebook research

Find public author records, top works, work counts, subjects, and ebook/full-text availability before deeper library or Internet Archive workflows.

FAQ

Does Open Library Book Scraper require an API key?

No. Version 0.1 uses Open Library's public APIs and keeps each run to one bounded request. High-volume workflows should follow Open Library's published usage guidance and cache results.

Does it scrape Open Library HTML pages?

No. It calls public JSON endpoints such as search.json and search/authors.json, then normalizes the returned metadata. It does not crawl HTML pages, log in, or bulk-download records.

Is this tool affiliated with Open Library or Internet Archive?

No. Open Library is an Internet Archive initiative. This Better Fetch tool uses public Open Library API data and is not endorsed by or affiliated with Open Library or Internet Archive.

Use it anywhere

MCP (Claude, Cursor, any client)

# Add the Better Fetch MCP connector (or paste the URL into
# Claude → Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector):
claude mcp add --transport http better-fetch https://betterfetch.co/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer bf_your_key_here"

# Then ask for the tool by name: open_library_book_scraper

REST

curl -sS -X POST "https://betterfetch.co/api/tools/open_library_book_scraper/run" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer bf_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"input": {"mode":"books","limit":2,"query":"lord of the rings"}}'

Run locally

git clone https://github.com/better-fetch/tools/tree/main/tools/open-library-book-scraper && cd open-library-book-scraper && npm i
BETTER_FETCH_API_KEY=bf_your_key_here npx bf-tool run --input '{"mode":"books","limit":2,"query":"lord of the rings"}'