Get Book
get_bookREAD PIPELINE step 1 — DISCOVER. START HERE for any named work or author. Returns the book's AI-generated summary, chapter list, edition metadata, DOI, page counts, IIIF manifest, and the cover image (inline, so you and the user can see the book). LANGUAGE: language is what is printed on THIS EDITION's leaves, which is frequently not the language the work was written in. Where the record knows they differ the response also carries work_language and a translation_note, and text_role (original / period-translation / modern-translation / unclassified) says what kind of witness this is — read them before describing a passage as the author's own words, because an edition can be a translation of a translation (de Slane's 1863 French Muqaddimah, read in English, is English←French←Arabic). Absent work_language means the work's language is NOT RECORDED on this record. It is not a statement that the edition is in the work's own language (most records have never been checked; Risner's 1572 Latin Alhazen carries none, and the work is Arabic). Only text_role: "original" asserts that these are the author's own words in the author's language; text_role: "unclassified" means nobody has examined it, so do not infer the work's language from language, and do not conclude the library lacks a tradition because a language filter came back empty. Use list_editions to find an original-language witness. The summary is typically a multi-paragraph orientation covering the book's argument, structure, and significance — often answering the question without further searching. Then: get_book_text to read a chapter or page range (step 2), get_quote / get_quotes to lock specific pages with full citation apparatus (step 3). search_within_book locates passages inside this book. MULTI-WORK VOLUMES: where the scans carry running heads, contains_works lists the works the volume ACTUALLY holds with their page spans, taken from the heads the printer put on each leaf. Trust it over the title — collected-works titles routinely name works the volume does not contain, and the volume holding a work often does not name it. If contains_works is absent the scans have no heads to read; status "insufficient-heads" means it was examined and could not be decided. EDITIONS: editions says which languages this book can be READ in and how many pages each covers ({ en: 357 } on most books, { en: 357, es: 357 } where a localized edition exists). Pass a code as lang to get_quote, get_quotes, get_book_text or search_within_book to read that edition; without it you get English.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| book_id | Yes | The book ID |