Open Library
Open Library offers a suite of APIs to help developers get up and running with its data. This includes RESTful APIs that make Open Library data available in JSON, YAML, and RDF/XML formats, plus a Search Inside full-text search service, cover image endpoints, and read-protocol library lookup APIs. Most resources also expose machine-readable representations by appending .json, .yml, or .rdf to any Open Library URL.
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles Open Library the way a machine reads it — 25 machine-readable artifacts across 19 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Open Library scores 34.1/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 39/100 (agent aware). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
How we profile Open Library
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Open Library. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 19
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Open Library Search API
Search Open Library's catalog of books, authors, lists, and subjects. Returns JSON results for full-text and faceted queries, with options for pagination, field selection, and l...
Open Library Search Inside API
Full-text search across the millions of digitized books in the Internet Archive's collection, returning matching passages and book identifiers.
Open Library Works API
Retrieve work-level records (the abstract concept of a book independent of edition) by Open Library Work ID. Returns JSON, YAML, or RDF/XML.
Open Library Editions API
Retrieve edition-level records (specific printings, ISBNs, formats) by Open Library Edition ID, ISBN-10, ISBN-13, OCLC, or LCCN.
Open Library Authors API
Fetch author records and their works by Open Library Author ID. Supports JSON, YAML, and RDF/XML representations.
Open Library Subjects API
Retrieve books, works, and metadata grouped by subject (genre, topic, place, time, person) with paging and faceting.
Open Library Covers API
Retrieve book and author cover images by Open Library ID, ISBN, OCLC, LCCN, or Goodreads ID, in small, medium, and large sizes.
Open Library Lists API
Read and manage user-curated reading lists. Authenticated patrons can create lists and add or remove works, editions, and subjects.
Open Library My Books API
Access a patron's public reading log: Want to Read, Currently Reading, and Already Read shelves for a given Open Library account.
Open Library Recent Changes API
Stream recent edits across the Open Library catalog including works, editions, authors, lists, and subjects, with filtering by kind and time range.
Open Library Read API
Legacy partner API that returns availability and read URLs for books matched by ISBN, OCLC, LCCN, or OLID identifiers across libraries and the Internet Archive.
Open Library Authors API
The Authors API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for authors.
Open Library Editions API
The Editions API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for editions.
Open Library Lists API
The Lists API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for lists.
Open Library Recentchanges.json API
The Recentchanges.json API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for recentchanges.json.
Open Library Search API
The Search API from Open Library — 2 operation(s) for search.
Open Library Search.json API
The Search.json API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for search.json.
Open Library Subjects API
The Subjects API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for subjects.
Open Library Works API
The Works API from Open Library — 1 operation(s) for works.
Scroll within the panel for all 19 ·
Open Collections 1
Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.
Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).
Open Library API
OPEN COLLECTIONPricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Rate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Open Library Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Open Library Finops
FINOPSSecurity Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Agentic Access 1
An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.
Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.
Resources
Every other property we hold for Open Library — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 1
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Build 1
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 1
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 1
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 2
The organization behind the API
Other 1
Properties that don't map to a standard resource type
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/open-library · machine-readable index on apis.io