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Алексей Спинов
Алексей Спинов

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Open Library API: Search 20M+ Books by Title, ISBN, Author, or Subject

#api #books #javascript #data

Open Library is the largest open book database. Its API is free and needs no key.

Search by Title 

https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=artificial+intelligence&limit=10
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Returns: title, authors, publish year, ISBN, cover URL, edition count, ratings.

Look Up by ISBN 

https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9780134685991.json
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Direct lookup with publishers, page count, cover.

Browse by Subject 

https://openlibrary.org/subjects/machine_learning.json?limit=25
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Search by Author 

https://openlibrary.org/search/authors.json?q=Isaac+Asimov
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Then get their works: /authors/OL34221A/works.json

Use Cases

  • Book recommendation engines
  • Library catalog systems
  • Academic research databases
  • Reading apps with metadata
  • AI training on book descriptions

I built an Open Library Scraper on Apify — search knotless_cadence openlibrary.

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