Open Library Search API

Open Library provides an experimental API to search.

WARNING: This is an experimental API and can change in future.

URL format

The URL format for API is simple. Take the search URL and replace /search with /search.json.

• http://openlibrary.org/search?q=the+lord+of+the+rings
  
• http://openlibrary.org/search?title=the+lord+of+the+rings
  
• http://openlibrary.org/search.json?author=tolkien
  
• http://openlibrary.org/search?q=the+lord+of+the+rings&page=2

Response Format

The response with be of the following format.

{
    "numFound": 629,
    "docs": [
        {...},
        {...},
        {...},
        ...
        {...}]
}

Each document specified listed in "docs" will be of the following format:

{
    cover_i: 258027,
    has_fulltext: true,
    edition_count: 120,
    title: "The Lord of the Rings",
    author_name: [
        "J. R. R. Tolkien"
    ],
    first_publish_year: 1954,
    key: "OL27448W",
    ia: [
        "returnofking00tolk_1",
        "lordofrings00tolk_1",
        "lordofrings00tolk_0",
        "lordofrings00tolk_3",
        "lordofrings00tolk_2",
        "lordofrings00tolk",
        "twotowersbeingse1970tolk",
        "lordofring00tolk",
        "lordofrings56tolk",
        "lordofringstolk00tolk",
        "fellowshipofring00tolk_0"
    ],
    author_key: [
        "OL26320A"
    ],
    public_scan_b: true
}