Open Library Book Scraper — ISBN Lookup, Authors & Metadata

Extract book data from Open Library — the world's largest open book catalog. Search by title, ISBN, subject, or author. Get titles, authors, publish dates, cover images, descriptions, ratings, and reading statistics. Uses the official API — completely free, no API key needed.

Features

• Multiple Search Modes — Search by keyword, ISBN, subject category, or author name
• ISBN Lookup — Look up any book by ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 for precise identification
• Book Descriptions — Fetch full book descriptions with optional per-book API enrichment
• Cover Images — Direct URLs to book cover images in large resolution
• Reading Statistics — Get want-to-read, currently-reading, and already-read counts
• Ratings Data — Average ratings and total rating counts from Open Library users
• Subject Classification — Up to 20 subject tags per book for categorization
• Author Bibliographies — Retrieve complete works lists for specific authors

Output Example

{
  "title": "Dune",
  "authors": ["Frank Herbert"],
  "firstPublishYear": 1965,
  "isbn": "9780441172719",
  "subjects": ["Science fiction", "Space warfare", "Ecology", "Political fiction", "Desert planet"],
  "publishers": ["Ace Books", "Chilton Books"],
  "languages": ["eng", "spa", "fra"],
  "pageCount": 412,
  "editionCount": 142,
  "coverUrl": "https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/12648488-L.jpg",
  "openLibraryUrl": "https://openlibrary.org/works/OL893415W",
  "ratingsAverage": 4.15,
  "ratingsCount": 2847,
  "wantToRead": 8523,
  "currentlyReading": 1204,
  "alreadyRead": 6891,
  "description": "Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides...",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-03-18T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Use Cases

• Book Dataset Building — Create structured book databases for recommendation engines or catalog systems
• Academic Research — Collect bibliographic metadata for citation analysis and library science
• Reading Analytics — Analyze reading trends, popular genres, and author popularity over time
• AI Training Data — Build book description and metadata datasets for NLP and recommendation models
• Publisher Research — Track edition counts, publication years, and multi-language availability
• Content Enrichment — Augment bookstore or library apps with cover images, descriptions, and ratings

Input Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	array	[]	Search books by title or keyword
isbns	array	[]	Look up books by ISBN-10 or ISBN-13
subjects	array	[]	Browse by subject (e.g., "science_fiction", "machine_learning")
authors	array	[]	Search books by author name (e.g., "Isaac Asimov")
maxBooksPerSource	integer	50	Max books per query, subject, or author (1-200)
includeDescription	boolean	true	Fetch full description (extra API call per book)

How It Works

The scraper uses the official Open Library REST API. For keyword searches, it queries the /search.json endpoint with pagination. ISBN lookups go directly to /isbn/{isbn}.json. Subject browsing uses the /subjects/ endpoint, and author searches first resolve the author key via /search/authors.json then fetch works via /authors/{key}/works.json. Descriptions require an additional API call per book to the work's JSON endpoint. Built-in delays ensure polite API usage.

Limitations

• Description fetching requires one extra API call per book, which slows down large extractions
• Some older or obscure books may have incomplete metadata (missing covers, descriptions, or page counts)