Search works and editions
search_booksSearch Internet Archive's Open Library by title, author, subject, place, period, or person; sort by reader rating or count to choose what to read.
Instructions
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. 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. 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 scans of the work: pass one to get_item, or use it to read the book itself. Use this to identify a work, and search_inside to find a phrase within one.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| page | No | ||
| sort | No | 'rating' is how readers scored it, 'readers' is how many recorded reading it, and both answer a question relevance cannot. | relevance |
| time | No | The period the work treats, such as '20th century'. | |
| limit | No | ||
| place | No | Where the work is set, such as 'Shanghai'. | |
| query | No | Title or author, as free text. Optional when a criterion below is given. | |
| person | No | Who the work is about, such as 'Napoleon'. | |
| subject | No | What the work is catalogued under, such as 'grief' or 'spy stories'. Also carries prizes and lists, such as 'Booker Prize'. | |
| year_to | No | Latest first publication. | |
| language | No | Three-letter code of the language, such as 'eng' or 'fre'. | |
| pages_max | No | Longest acceptable work. The count is a median across editions. | |
| pages_min | No | Shortest acceptable work. | |
| year_from | No | Earliest first publication. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| page | Yes | ||
| books | Yes | ||
| notes | Yes | ||
| query | Yes | What was searched for, criteria included. | |
| total | Yes | Works matching, not the number returned. |