Which integrations are available for this server?

Allows searching and retrieving academic papers from arXiv, a repository of preprints in physics, mathematics, computer science, and related fields. Enables retrieval of documentation for the Fastify web framework. Provides access to Islamicate texts from the OpenITI collection hosted on GitHub. Allows searching and accessing book metadata and full text from Google Books. Enables searching of the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) for astronomy, astrophysics, and physics literature. Powers natural language search routing using OpenAI's GPT-4o-mini model to determine which sources to query. Allows searching over 200 million academic papers with AI-powered recommendations and citation graphs. Provides vector storage for ingesting and retrieving full-text content via a Supabase database. Enables searching of digitized newspapers, books, and other collections from the National Library of Australia. Allows searching and retrieving research outputs from CERN's open repository with higher rate limits.

How do I use Alexandria MCP?

1. Click on "Install Server". 2. Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state. 3. In the chat, type @ followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@Alexandria MCP find recent papers on transformer models" That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed. Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.

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Alexandria MCP

by The-40-Thieves

Overview Schema Related Servers Score Discussions

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Alexandria

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for querying, reading, and ingesting texts from 61 public digital libraries. Works with any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, etc.).

Tools

Tool	Description
`library_list_sources`	List all 61 sources with descriptions and full-text capabilities
`library_ask(query, max_sources?, results_per_source?)`	Natural language search — routes your query to the best sources, searches in parallel, returns unified deduplicated results
`library_search(query, source, limit?)`	Search a specific source by title, author, or keywords
`library_read(id, source)`	Fetch full text or metadata for an item (200k char limit)
`library_index(id, source)`	Dry run: chunk and score text quality without writing anything
`library_ingest(id, source)`	Chunk → embed → store in your vector database. Idempotent.
`library_recommend(id, limit?)`	Get similar papers via Semantic Scholar's recommendation engine (up to 500)

library_ask is the primary entry point. library_search is for targeted queries against a known source. library_index / library_ingest are for building a vector knowledge base from retrieved texts.

Sources (61)

Public Domain Literature (29)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`gutenberg`	76k+ public domain books	Yes
`openlibrary`	30M+ records	Metadata only
`archive`	41M+ texts, newspapers, scanned books	Yes
`sacredtexts`	Curated registry: Quran, Sufi corpus, Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism, Hermeticism, Christian mysticism	Yes (scraped)
`wikisource`	Free-content library: historical documents, literary works	Yes
`standardebooks`	Carefully formatted, public domain ebooks	Yes
`perseus`	Classical Greek and Latin texts with translations	Yes
`ctext`	Chinese Text Project — pre-modern Chinese literature	Yes
`gallica`	Bibliothèque nationale de France — French heritage texts	Yes
`loc`	Library of Congress — US historical collections	Metadata only
`hathitrust`	17M+ volumes from research libraries	Metadata only
`dpla`	Digital Public Library of America — US cultural heritage	Metadata only
`ndl`	National Diet Library Japan	Metadata only
`europeana`	European cultural heritage — 50M+ objects	Metadata only
`trove`	National Library of Australia — newspapers, books, images	Yes
`bhl`	Biodiversity Heritage Library — natural history literature	Yes
`digitalnz`	National Library of New Zealand	Metadata only
`internetclassics`	Internet Classics Archive — 441 classical works	Yes
`marxists`	Marxists Internet Archive — political theory, philosophy	Yes
`projectruneberg`	Nordic literature and history	Yes
`cervantes`	Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes — Spanish literature	Yes
`doab`	Directory of Open Access Books — 70k+ peer-reviewed OA books	Metadata only
`oapen`	Open Access Publishing in European Networks — humanities & social sciences	Yes
`googlebooks`	Google Books — metadata and preview snippets	Metadata only
`chroniclingamerica`	Library of Congress — US historic newspapers 1770–1963	Yes
`ccel`	Christian Classics Ethereal Library	Yes
`feedbooks`	Public domain and self-published ebooks	Yes
`wdl`	World Digital Library — international manuscripts and maps	Metadata only
`datagov`	Data.gov — US government open data catalog	Metadata only

Academic & Science (11)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`arxiv`	2M+ preprints: physics, math, CS, biology, economics	Yes
`core`	57M+ open access research papers across all disciplines	Yes
`europmc`	Europe PubMed Central — life sciences literature	Yes
`nasa`	NASA Technical Reports Server	Yes
`osti`	DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information	Yes
`eric`	Education Resources Information Center	Yes
`nsf`	NSF Award Search — funded research abstracts	Yes
`courtlistener`	US federal and state court opinions (Free Law Project). 125 req/day.	Yes
`biorxiv`	bioRxiv preprints — biology	Yes
`zenodo`	CERN open repository — papers, datasets, software. 2M+ records.	Yes
`semanticscholar`	Semantic Scholar — 200M+ papers with AI-powered metadata	Yes

Government, Law & International (5)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`govinfo`	US Government Publishing Office — laws, regulations, congressional records	Yes
`nih`	NIH Office of Portfolio Analysis	Yes
`nbnorway`	National Library of Norway	Metadata only
`legislation`	legislation.gov.uk — UK Acts and Statutory Instruments	Yes
`osf`	Open Science Framework — preprints and research data	Yes

Specialized Corpora (3)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`earlyprint`	Early English print 1473–1700	Yes
`openiti`	OpenITI — Arabic/Persian Islamic texts (GitHub-based)	Yes
`legislationscot`	Scottish legislation	Yes

Research Aggregators (8)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`openalex`	OpenAlex — 240M+ scholarly works, open catalog	Metadata only
`plos`	PLOS journals — open access science	Yes
`crossref`	Crossref — 150M+ DOI metadata records	Metadata only
`nasaads`	NASA Astrophysics Data System	Yes
`smithsonian`	Smithsonian Institution — collections and research	Metadata only
`doaj`	Directory of Open Access Journals — 20k+ journals	Metadata only
`nara`	National Archives — US federal records	Metadata only
`springer`	SpringerNature — OA and metadata	Metadata only

Institutional Repositories (4)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`harvardlib`	Harvard Library Digital Collections	Metadata only
`apollo`	Cambridge University repository	Yes
`ora`	Oxford Research Archive	Yes
`base`	Bielefeld Academic Search Engine — 300M+ documents (pending IP whitelist)	Metadata only

Software Documentation (1)

Source	Coverage	Full Text
`codewiki`	Google Code Wiki — open source project documentation	Yes

Credentials

Most tools query external library APIs directly and need no credentials at all. The two optional dependencies are scoped to specific tools:

OpenAI — optional (platform.openai.com)

Required by two tools only:

library_ask — uses gpt-4o-mini to route your natural language query to the right sources and generate optimized per-source search terms. Without this key, use library_search to query sources directly.
library_ingest — uses text-embedding-3-small to embed chunked text before writing to the vector store.

library_list_sources, library_search, library_read, library_index, and library_recommend all work without an OpenAI key.

Supabase — optional (supabase.com)

Required by one tool only:

library_ingest — writes chunked, embedded text into a pgvector table for semantic search. Without this, retrieved texts stay in-context and are not persisted anywhere.

Everything else — searching, reading, browsing, getting recommendations — queries external sources in real time and needs no database.

Source-specific keys

Some sources require their own API key. These are free registrations. Sources without a key listed here work without any credentials.

Env Var	Source(s)	Get It
`CORE_API_KEY`	`core`	core.ac.uk/services/api
`COURTLISTENER_API_KEY`	`courtlistener`	courtlistener.com/profile/tokens
`GOVINFO_API_KEY`	`govinfo`, `smithsonian`	api.data.gov/signup — one key covers both
`GOOGLE_BOOKS_API_KEY`	`googlebooks`	Google Cloud Console → APIs & Services → Books API
`BHL_API_KEY`	`bhl`	biodiversitylibrary.org/getapikey
`DIGITALNZ_API_KEY`	`digitalnz`	digitalnz.org/developers
`DPLA_API_KEY`	`dpla`	pro.dp.la/developers/api-codex
`EUROPEANA_API_KEY`	`europeana`	apis.europeana.eu — test key immediate, personal ~1 week
`GITHUB_TOKEN`	`openiti`	github.com/settings/tokens — public repo read scope, optional but prevents rate limiting
`NASA_ADS_API_KEY`	`nasaads`	ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/user/settings/token
`SPRINGER_OA_API_KEY` + `SPRINGER_META_API_KEY`	`springer`	dev.springernature.com — same registration, two keys
`ZENODO_API_KEY`	`zenodo`	zenodo.org/account/settings/applications/tokens/new — optional, increases rate limits
`SEMANTIC_SCHOLAR_API_KEY`	`semanticscholar`	semanticscholar.org/product/api — optional, increases rate limits
`TROVE_API_KEY`	`trove`	trove.nla.gov.au/about/create-something/using-api — ~1 week approval
`BASE_API_KEY`	`base`	base-search.net/about/en/contact — requires IP whitelist

Setup

git clone https://github.com/suavecito585/alexandria-mcp
cd alexandria-mcp
npm install
npm run build

Copy .env.example to .env. Minimum configuration to run with no credentials (search and read only):

TRANSPORT=stdio

To enable library_ask:

TRANSPORT=stdio
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

To enable library_ingest:

TRANSPORT=stdio
OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
SUPABASE_URL=https://your-project.supabase.co
SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=eyJ...

Supabase Schema

Required only if using library_ingest:

create table if not exists knowledge_chunks (
  id bigserial primary key,
  content text not null,
  embedding vector(1536),
  mcp_name text,
  metadata jsonb,
  created_at timestamptz default now()
);

create table if not exists source_docs (
  id bigserial primary key,
  source_url text not null,
  mcp_name text not null,
  title text,
  source text,
  chunk_count int,
  indexed_at timestamptz,
  unique (source_url, mcp_name)
);

create index if not exists knowledge_chunks_embedding_idx
  on knowledge_chunks using ivfflat (embedding vector_cosine_ops)
  with (lists = 100);

Claude Desktop (stdio)

Minimum config (search and read only):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "library": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/alexandria-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio"
      }
    }
  }
}

With library_ask and library_ingest enabled:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "library": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/alexandria-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "TRANSPORT": "stdio",
        "OPENAI_API_KEY": "sk-...",
        "SUPABASE_URL": "https://your-project.supabase.co",
        "SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY": "eyJ..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Railway (HTTP)

Set env vars in the Railway dashboard and deploy:

railway up

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "library": {
      "url": "https://your-service.up.railway.app/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Health check: GET /health returns { status: "ok", sources: 61 }.

Adding Custom Providers

The pipeline is provider-agnostic. To add a new embedding model or vector store:

Implement EmbeddingProvider or VectorStoreProvider from src/types.ts
Add your implementation to src/pipeline/providers/
Register it in src/pipeline/providers/index.ts
Set EMBEDDING_PROVIDER or VECTOR_STORE_PROVIDER in your env

// Example: Ollama embedding provider
import type { EmbeddingProvider } from '../../types.js';

export class OllamaEmbeddingProvider implements EmbeddingProvider {
  readonly dimensions = 768;

  async embed(texts: string[]): Promise<number[][]> {
    // your implementation
  }
}

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