Search the text inside digitised books, newspapers and documents on the Internet Archive. This reads what optical recognition took off the scanned pages, so it finds a phrase that appears nowhere in a title or a catalogue record. Put a phrase in double quotes to hold the words together in that order. The index folds accents, case and punctuation before it matches, so the letters are not held: a quoted "bûcher" comes back on pages printing Bücher and Bucher. Read an excerpt before repeating a quoted query as the spelling a page carries. Without quotes the words are matched separately, which finds far more. 'total' counts the documents that match, and they page: ask for page 2, 3 and so on to see beyond the first answer. It is not a count of how many times the phrase occurs. The index reports no page number, so a match names the item and the passage, never a leaf. Follow source_url and search the item to find where the passage sits. When 'inside_container' is true the passage came from a document bundled inside the item, and the title, creator and year describe the container rather than the text that matched: read 'matched_file' for what actually holds it. Use search_items or search_books instead when looking for a work by its title, author or subject.

Search the Internet Archive catalogue: films, books, recordings, images, software and datasets. This matches titles, creators and descriptions, so a compilation whose notes mention a name ranks alongside that person's own work: read 'creator' on each row before treating a result as theirs. It does not read the contents of a scan; use search_inside for a phrase within a book. Set 'media_type' whenever the kind of thing is known, because one title exists across several media and mixing them makes a result list unreadable. 'oldest', 'newest', 'year_from' and 'year_to' all read one field: the date a depositor typed into the record. An item with no date carries a placeholder the index sorts as a real one, a date written as a fragment is filed at the year that fragment reads as, and the field holds no era, so a Babylonian tablet of 1712 BCE answers a search of 1700 to 1750. Read an order or a range as a statement about that field. Every row carries an 'identifier', which get_item takes.

Read one Internet Archive item by its identifier, as returned by search_items or search_inside. Sections are opt-in: 'basic' is the default and covers what a description needs. 'files' lists the downloadable files, which on a scanned film or book run to dozens of derivatives, so filter by format when a particular one is wanted. 'full_metadata' returns every field the Archive publishes for the item, which is large and rarely needed. 'file_count' and 'total_bytes' are always reported, whether or not the file list was asked for.

Find the Wayback Machine capture of a web page closest to a given date. Give 'at' to ask for a moment in time; leave it out for the most recent capture. The answer always states 'days_from_requested', because the closest capture can be years away from the date asked for: read it before describing what the page said on that date. It also states the address the capture is of, which the Wayback Machine can resolve to a neighbouring form of the one asked about. This finds the capture and links to it. It does not return the page's contents.

List Wayback Machine captures of a web page, oldest first, with the dates they were taken. Answers how long a page has been archived and how often, which get_snapshot cannot. A capture whose content repeats the row before it is left out of the index answer. The index also holds one site under several addresses at once, such as its www form, its https form and a form carrying credentials, and returns them interleaved, so two consecutive rows can differ because the address differs rather than because the page did. Every row names the address it captured; read that before counting the captures of any one of them. A capture records when the crawler came, not when the page changed: the change happened somewhere between two dates. This route is slow, tens of seconds on a heavily archived address, and it is paged for that reason. To walk further back, pass the 'next_cursor' from the previous answer as 'cursor'. The index counts rows rather than positions, so there is no page number and no arithmetic to do: a null 'next_cursor' means the end of what it holds.

Find a book on Open Library, the Internet Archive's catalogue of works, either by name or by description. Pass 'query' when you know what you are looking for: a title, an author. Free text matches parts of words and reads titles and authors together, so a name also finds works by authors whose name merely contains it: read 'authors' on each row before treating a result as that author's work. Pass the criteria instead when you do not, and they combine: 'subject' for what a work is catalogued under, 'place' for where it is set, 'time' for the period it treats, 'person' for who it is about, plus ranges on the year of first publication and on the page count. 'sort' by rating or by readers answers 'what is worth reading', which relevance alone does not. 'first_published_year' is the year Open Library derives from its edition records, and a reissue or a mistyped edition can put it centuries from the real date; 'newest' and 'oldest' rank on that field, so the rows carrying the doubtful years lead the order. Answers who wrote a book, when it first appeared and how many editions exist, which the item catalogue describes poorly because it holds one upload at a time. 'archive_identifiers' lists up to 3 scans of the work: pass one to get_item, or use it to read the book itself. 'scan_count' says how many the work has. A scan is one edition, and a work first printed centuries ago is often held only as a later reissue or a translation, so read the scan's own record before dating what it holds. Use this to identify a work, and search_inside to find a phrase within one.