Search Gallica for documents matching a text query.

Searches across OCR content with support for boolean operators and exact phrases. Returns paginated results with metadata. Uses exact matching by default.

Note: To get text snippets showing where your search terms appear within documents, use the get_snippets tool with the document identifier and query.

Args: query: Text to search in OCR content. Supports CQL query syntax: - Simple text: "Houdini" or "magic tricks" (all words must appear, any order) - Exact phrases: '"Harry Houdini"' (use double quotes for exact phrase) - AND operator: "magic AND illusion" (both terms must appear - MUST BE UPPERCASE) - OR operator: "Houdini OR Houdin" (either term can appear - MUST BE UPPERCASE) - NOT operator: "magic NOT card" (first term yes, second term no - MUST BE UPPERCASE) - Parentheses: "(Houdini OR Houdin) AND escape" (group operations for precedence) - Combine all: '"Harry Houdini" AND (escape OR illusion) NOT death'

    Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) MUST be UPPERCASE.
    The query is converted to CQL format automatically and searches OCR text content.

page: Page number for pagination, 1-indexed (default: 1)

Returns: Dictionary containing: - page: Current page number - total_results: Total number of matching documents - total_pages: Total number of pages available - documents: List of documents with: - identifier: ARK identifier (use with download_text or get_snippets) - title: Document title - url: URL to view document on gallica.bnf.fr - creators: List of authors/creators - date: Publication date (if available) - type: Document type (e.g., monographie, périodique) - language: Language code (if available)

Examples: # Simple search search_gallica(query="Houdini")

# Exact phrase
search_gallica(query='"Harry Houdini"')

# Boolean operators
search_gallica(query="magic AND illusion")
search_gallica(query="Houdini OR Houdin")
search_gallica(query="magic NOT card")

# Complex query
search_gallica(query='("Harry Houdini" OR "Jean Houdin") AND (escape OR illusion)')

Download OCR text from a Gallica document and save to cache in plain text format.

Args: identifier: Gallica ARK identifier (e.g., 'ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j')

Returns: Path to the cached text file (as string)

IMPORTANT: The downloaded files are VERY LARGE (typically 100KB-1MB+ of text). DO NOT attempt to read the entire file into context. Use read tools with offset/limit parameters to read specific portions. Reading the full file will waste tokens and may cause performance issues.

Example: path = download_text("ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j")

Fetch text snippets showing where search terms appear in a Gallica document.

Uses the ContentSearch API to find and return text excerpts with page numbers. This is useful for locating specific content within a document after searching.

Args: identifier: Gallica ARK identifier (e.g., 'ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j') query: Search terms to find in the document. Supports the same syntax as search_gallica: - Simple text: "Houdini" or "magic tricks" - Exact phrases: '"Harry Houdini"' - Boolean operators: "magic AND illusion", "Houdini OR Houdin" - Complex queries: '("Harry Houdini" OR "Jean Houdin") AND escape'

Returns: Dictionary containing: - identifier: The document ARK identifier - query: The search query used - snippets: List of text excerpts with: - text: Snippet text showing search terms in context - page: Page identifier (e.g., "PAG_200" for page 200)

Examples: # Get snippets for a specific document get_snippets("ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j", "Houdini")

# Find exact phrase occurrences
get_snippets("ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j", '"Harry Houdini"')

# Complex query
get_snippets("ark:/12148/bpt6k5619759j", "magic AND (illusion OR escape)")