Get Books

Get book metadata by bibliography keys.

This endpoint provides basic information about books, including URLs, thumbnail links, and preview availability. Supports ISBNs, LCCNs, OCLC numbers, and Open Library IDs.

  • bibkeys is expected a comma separated string of ISBNs, LCCNs, etc.
  • 'high_priority=true' will attempt to import an edition from a supplied ISBN if no matching edition is found. If not high_priority, then missed bib_keys are queued for lookup on the affiliate-server, and any responses are staged in import_item.

Example call: http://localhost:8080/api/books.json?bibkeys=059035342X,0312368615&high_priority=true

Returns a JSONified dictionary of the form: {"059035342X": { "bib_key": "059035342X", "info_url": "http://localhost:8080/books/OL43M/Harry_Potter_and_the_Sorcerer's_Stone", "preview": "noview", "preview_url": "https://archive.org/details/lccn_078073006991", "thumbnail_url": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/21-S.jpg" } "0312368615": {...} }

get/api/books.json

Request

  • Base URL: https://openlibrary.org (the document declares no server; this is the origin it was published from)
  • URL: https://openlibrary.org/api/books.json
  • Auth: none declared

Query parameters

bibkeysstring[] required

Comma-separated list of bibliography keys (ISBN, LCCN, OCLC, etc.)

details'true' | 'false'

Include detailed book information

jscmd'details' | 'data' | 'viewapi' nullable

Format of returned data

callbackstring nullable

JSONP callback function name

high_priorityboolean

Attempt import immediately for missing ISBNs

format'json' | 'js' nullable

Explicitly set response format (overrides path-based detection)

Response

Successful Response

unknown required

Changes

No recorded changes to this operation across all 1 revision of this API.