Open Library API

Overview

Open Library (by the Internet Archive) catalogs every book ever published — 40M+ editions, 20M+ unique works. The API provides book search, ISBN/OCLC lookup, cover images, and reading access for 2M+ borrowable ebooks. Particularly useful for monograph discovery, edition tracking, and bibliographic verification. Free, no authentication required.

API Endpoints

Search Books

# Full-text search
curl "https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=machine+learning&limit=20"

# Search by title
curl "https://openlibrary.org/search.json?title=deep+learning&limit=10"

# Search by author
curl "https://openlibrary.org/search.json?author=goodfellow&title=deep+learning"