ANNO MCP Server

MCP server for ANNO (AustriaN Newspapers Online), the historical newspaper archive of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. Roughly 28 million pages from over 1,600 titles, 1735 to the present, overwhelmingly German-language, with over 91% of holdings full-text searchable.

• search_anno: Full-text search with AND/OR/NOT, exact phrases and wildcards. Results resolve to an issue, with the number of hits inside it.

• get_snippets: The page-level step — which page of an issue a term appears on, with the match in context and a citation URL for that exact page.

• download_text: OCR plain text for a newspaper issue or a single page of it, cached locally.

• advanced_search_anno: Search with date, title, place, language, subject and medium filters.

There are two ways to use it: an MCP server for clients that speak MCP, and an anno CLI for agents driven through a shell. Both share one client, one cache and one set of behaviours. The CLI is what the bundled anno-search skill uses, and it exposes every filter unconditionally rather than hiding them behind an install flag.

ANNO publishes no API. This client talks to the REST backend of the AnnoSearch app at anno.onb.ac.at/anno-suche/rest, found by reading the app's JavaScript bundle, plus the annoshow CGI that the page viewer's "Text" button opens. Both are unauthenticated and need no key — but nobody has promised to keep them stable, so the client detects endpoint drift explicitly rather than failing obscurely.

Installation

Install the code

uv sync

Install the CLI

uv tool install .        # puts `anno` on your PATH

Install to MCP CLIs

Installs to Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI:

# Basic installation (search_anno + get_snippets + download_text)
uv run anno-mcp-install

# With advanced search enabled (adds advanced_search_anno)
uv run anno-mcp-install --enable-advanced-search

Verify the installation:

claude mcp list   # For Claude Code
codex mcp list    # For Codex CLI
gemini mcp list   # For Gemini CLI

Related MCP server: MEK MCP

Usage

CLI

anno search 'Weltausstellung'                                    # first page, best matches first
anno search '"Wiener Weltausstellung"' --from-year 1873 --to-year 1873
anno search 'Ringstraße Neubau' --from-year 1865 --to-year 1875 --sort date_asc
anno search 'Semmeringbahn' --place Wien --title nfp --pages all
anno search 'Weltausstellung' --format periodical                # illustrated & trade weeklies only
anno snippets ANNO_nfp18731202 'Ringstraße'                      # which page, in context
anno get ANNO_nfp18731202 --page 3                               # cached OCR text path

Filters: --from-year, --to-year, --title, --place, --language, --subject, --format, --sort. Facet values are taken verbatim, so copy them from a result rather than translating them — the place value for Prague is Praha (Prag), and Prag is a different, nearly empty one.

--format splits the archive in the way that matters for cost. It takes newspaper (ANNO's own value for it is journal) or periodical, and the two partition the results exactly: Weltausstellung reports 153,804, of which 145,799 are newspapers and 8,005 periodicals. The split is worth knowing because only newspapers have an OCR text endpoint — --format periodical selects precisely the material anno get will refuse, and --format newspaper precisely the material it will serve.

The workflow is search → snippets to find the page and judge it cheaply → get only what is worth reading. Add --json for machine-readable output.

Search resolves to an issue, not a page. A result says "this issue of the Neue Freie Presse contains 7 hits"; snippets is what turns that into "page 3, and here is the sentence". That middle step is where most of the value is, because it is also enough to quote in a report.

Result totals are true match counts. Unlike Gallica, ANNO filters rather than ranks: Weltausstellung reports 153,804, Weltausstellung AND Ringstraße 19,958, Weltausstellung NOT Ringstraße 133,846 — and 19,958 + 133,846 = 153,804 exactly. A total can therefore be quoted as a count, and --sort date_asc is safe on any query you intend to sweep.

Ten results per page, fixed. ANNO offers no way to raise it, so sweeps are request-hungry: 1,385 results is 139 requests. Combining variants into one (A OR B OR C) query is how you keep that down.

Downloads are cached in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/anno-mcp (override with --cache-dir or ANNO_CACHE_DIR). The cache location does not depend on the working directory, so the CLI can be run from anywhere.

Requests are paced one every 3 seconds by default, overridable with ANNO_MIN_REQUEST_INTERVAL. The ÖNB publishes no rate limit and none was observed in testing, so this is caution rather than a measured ceiling.

get is the expensive call, and unusually so here. ANNO serves OCR one page at a time — a whole-issue download costs one paced request per page, so a 104-page issue is over five minutes of requests. Use --page once snippets has told you which page you want. Periodicals (ANNOP_) have no text endpoint at all and get refuses them with an explanation; their snippets work normally.

MCP server

Run the server directly:

uv run anno-mcp

Test with MCP Inspector:

uv run fastmcp dev src/anno_mcp/server.py