OverDrive
OverDrive is a digital reading platform that distributes ebooks, audiobooks, and magazines to public libraries and schools worldwide, best known for its Libby and Sora reading apps. OverDrive publishes a set of REST APIs that let library systems, integrators, and partners work against a library's OverDrive collection: Discovery APIs (Library Account, Search, Metadata, and Library Availability), Circulation APIs (patron information, checkouts, and holds), Reporting APIs (checkouts report), and a Title Link API. Access is authorized with OAuth 2.0 client-credentials (client authentication) for discovery and patron authentication (including QR-code sign-in) for borrowing and holds, with a dedicated integration environment for testing against real titles before going live.
More than an index entry, but the surface is still mostly links rather than artifacts — the cohort most likely to move a full band from modest, well-targeted work.
API Evangelist profiles OverDrive the way a machine reads it — 7 machine-readable artifacts across 3 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 — OverDrive scores 27.8/100 (emerging), with a separate agent-readiness read of 28/100 (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 OverDrive
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for OverDrive. 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 3
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.
OverDrive Discovery API
Discovery APIs to search and find information about titles in a library's OverDrive collection — Library Account, Search, Metadata, and Library Availability.
OverDrive Circulation API
Circulation APIs to authenticate patrons and manage checkouts and holds against a library's OverDrive collection.
OverDrive Reporting API
Reporting API to see the titles that were borrowed from a specific collection during a specific time period (public libraries only).
MCP Servers 1
Model Context Protocol servers expose these APIs directly to AI agents. We profile them because agent-native access is the fastest-growing way this provider's capabilities actually get used.
Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.
overdrive-mcp.yml
MCP SERVERSecurity Posture 3
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.
Resources
Every other property we hold for OverDrive — 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.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 2
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Agent Surfaces 3
MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs
Design & Contract 3
Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events
Access & Security 5
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 2
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Company 1
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/overdrive · machine-readable index on apis.io