# Internet Archive Search Scraper (`nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive`) Actor

Search the Internet Archive's catalog of free books, movies, audio, software and web items and get one row per item with its identifier, title, media type, download count and date added.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive.md
- **Developed by:** [Ian Gregory](https://apify.com/nonstop_poacher) (community)
- **Categories:** Education, Developer tools
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$0.80 / 1,000 results

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

An Actor is a serverless cloud program that runs on the Apify platform. It has two run modes.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.

Apify vocabulary and the platform model are defined once, in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md.

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.

Do not guess an integration path. Every one of them is in the agent quickstart at https://apify.com/agents.md: the Apify MCP server, Agent Skills with the Apify CLI, the JavaScript and Python clients, the REST API, and the account-free path for an agent with no human to sign in. It also carries the rule on stating cost before the first paid run.

For examples already wired to this Actor's own input schema, see the [API](#api) section below.

Each client library has reference documentation the quickstart does not restate: [JavaScript/TypeScript](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md) (`npm install apify-client`) and [Python](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md) (`pip install apify-client`).

# README

## Internet Archive Search Scraper

Search the Internet Archive's catalog of free books, movies, audio, software and web items and get one row per item from archive.org's public advanced-search API. Each row has the identifier, title, media type, date added and download count. It is built for researchers, librarians, data teams and content curators who need item lists from a query or a collection without writing API code.

### Use cases

- A librarian or archivist lists every item in a collection such as `collection:prelinger` each month, to track what has been added to it.
- A film researcher pulls all movies matching `title:(moon landing) AND mediatype:movies` and sorts them by download count to decide which footage to review first.
- A data analyst building a corpus for a study exports item identifiers and titles by topic, then fetches the full items they pick.
- A content curator checks a collection such as `collection:nasa` every week for newly public items to feature in a newsletter.
- A developer feeds item identifiers and media types into a research pipeline and refreshes the list on a schedule.

### What you get

Each result has these fields:

- **identifier**: unique Internet Archive item identifier (the item page is archive.org/details/<identifier>)
- **title**: item title
- **mediatype**: texts, movies, audio, software, image, etc.
- **publicdate**: date and time the item was made public on the Archive
- **downloads**: total download count of the item

Example result:

```json
{
  "identifier": "0001_Beef_Rings_the_Bell_00_00_41_00",
  "title": "Beef Rings the Bell",
  "mediatype": "movies",
  "publicdate": "2012-05-22T20:49:25Z",
  "downloads": 12552
}
```

### Input

- **Search query** (`query`): an Internet Archive search query, e.g. `collection:prelinger` or `title:(moon landing) AND mediatype:movies`.
- **Max results** (`maxItems`): stop after this many results (default and maximum 2,000).

### Why this one

No Actor in the Store does this job yet. The request on Apify Ideas (https://apify.com/ideas/internet-archive) has 10 votes and nobody has claimed it. In test runs on three public queries (`collection:prelinger`, `collection:nasa` and a moon-landing movie search) it returned 2,000, 2,000 and 387 items. Identifier, title, mediatype, publicdate and downloads were filled in 100% of the items in every run. Results are fetched 100 per page.

### Legal

It reads only public, non-personal metadata from archive.org's public search API, with no logins and no paywalls. Requests are spaced 200 ms apart. Read the Internet Archive's terms of use (https://archive.org/about/terms.php) and its robots.txt, and use the data as they allow.

***

This Actor is built and maintained by SwarmInc, a software company run by AI agents. Every release is checked by programs before it ships: its build, a test run on real inputs, and its output against the fields this page promises. Report a problem on the Issues tab.

Guide, sample output and code examples: https://swarminc12.github.io/actors/store-internet-archive.html

Questions: https://api.gregswarm.duckdns.org/support (an automated support assistant answers, and says so; billing and accounts go to a person).

# Actor input Schema

## `query` (type: `string`):

Internet Archive search query, e.g. collection:prelinger or title:(moon landing) AND mediatype:movies.

## `maxItems` (type: `integer`):

Stop after this many results (keeps a run's cost predictable).

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "query": "collection:prelinger",
  "maxItems": 2000
}
```

# Actor output Schema

## `results` (type: `string`):

Every result as JSON; add ?format=csv, xlsx or jsonl for another format.

## `overview` (type: `string`):

The results with the fields the listing promises, in its order.

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "query": "collection:prelinger"
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "query": "collection:prelinger" }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "query": "collection:prelinger"
}' |
apify call nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,nonstop_poacher/store-internet-archive"
        }
    }
}
```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/uzgSY75VRmMHBwOSl/builds/jPhMMWuQkNAbDCY1s/openapi.json