📚 Open Library Scraper

🚀 Extract book data from Open Library in seconds. Search by title, author, or subject with ebook filtering. No coding, no API keys required.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-04-16 · 📊 20 fields · 🔍 5 search types · 📖 Supports books, authors, subjects, lists, and full-text search

Open Library is the Internet Archive's free, open catalog of every book ever published. This scraper connects to Open Library's public API and returns structured book data including titles, authors, ISBNs, publishers, cover images, ratings, descriptions, page counts, and download links. It supports 5 search types (Books, Authors, Search Inside, Subjects, and Lists), handles pagination automatically, and exports data as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Whether you are building a book recommendation engine, tracking ISBN availability, or conducting bibliographic research, this actor delivers structured data for up to 1,000,000 records per run for paid users. Each result includes cover images, publication dates, publisher names, available formats (PDF, EPUB, AZW3), community ratings, edition counts, and subject classifications. No manual searching, copying, or format conversion needed.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Use Cases
Librarians	Build digital catalogs with cover images and ISBNs
Publishers	Research publication history and edition counts
Book bloggers	Generate reading lists with ratings and descriptions
Data scientists	Analyze publishing trends by subject and year
App developers	Feed book metadata into recommendation engines
Educators	Curate subject-specific reading lists for courses

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📋 What the Open Library Scraper does

• 🔍 Keyword search across books, authors, subjects, lists, and full-text content
• 📖 Ebook filtering to show only books available as free digital downloads
• 🖼️ Cover image extraction with URLs for small, medium, and large sizes
• 📊 Edition and rating data including community ratings and total edition counts
• 📥 Download link collection for PDF, EPUB, and AZW3 formats when available
• 🌐 Direct URL support to scrape any Open Library search results page

The scraper sends your query to Open Library's public API, retrieves matching records, and extracts full metadata for each item. For book searches, it collects titles, authors, ISBNs, publishers, page counts, descriptions, cover images, ratings, available formats, and download links. For author searches, it returns author profiles with their works. Every record is timestamped and includes a direct link to the Open Library entry.

💡 Why it matters: Open Library contains metadata for millions of books, but browsing and exporting data manually is tedious. This scraper automates collection and delivers clean, structured data ready for databases, spreadsheets, or applications.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon...

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⚙️ Input

Field	Type	Required	Description
searchQuery	string	No	Search term for books, authors, or subjects (e.g., "Space")
searchType	string	No	What to search: books, authors, searchInside, subjects, or lists
ebooksOnly	boolean	No	Show only ebooks (only works with "books" search type)
startUrl	string	No	Direct Open Library search URL (overrides search filters)
maxItems	integer	No	Max results to collect. Free: up to 10. Paid: up to 1,000,000

Example 1: Basic book search

{
  "searchQuery": "Space",
  "searchType": "books",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example 2: Ebook-only author search

{
  "searchQuery": "Isaac Asimov",
  "searchType": "books",
  "ebooksOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

⚠️ Good to Know: Use either a Start URL or search filters, not both. If you provide a Start URL, search filters are ignored. The ebooks-only filter only works with the "books" search type.

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📊 Output

🧾 Schema

Emoji	Field	Type	Description
🖼️	coverImage	string	Book cover image URL
📝	title	string	Full book title
👤	author	string	Author name
🔗	detailUrl	string	Direct link to the Open Library entry
📅	publicationDate	string	First publication date
🏢	publisher	string	Publisher name
📊	isbn	string	ISBN identifier
🌍	language	string	Available languages
📖	pageCount	number	Number of pages
📄	description	string	Full book description
🏷️	subjects	array	Subject classifications
🏷️	subjectTags	array	Subject tag identifiers
🖼️	coverImages	object	Cover image URLs in multiple sizes
💾	availableFormats	array	Ebook formats (PDF, EPUB, AZW3)
📥	downloadLinks	array	Direct download links for ebooks
⭐	rating	number	Community rating score
📊	editionCount	number	Number of published editions
🆔	itemId	string	Open Library work identifier
⏰	scrapedAt	string	Timestamp of when the record was collected
⚠️	error	string	Error message if processing failed

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

Feature	Details
🔍 5 search types	Books, Authors, Search Inside, Subjects, and Lists
📖 Ebook filtering	Show only books available for free digital download
🖼️ Cover images	URLs in small, medium, and large sizes
📥 Download links	Direct links to PDF, EPUB, and AZW3 files
⭐ Community ratings	Rating scores and edition counts
📊 Full metadata	ISBNs, publishers, page counts, descriptions, and subjects
📦 Flexible export	JSON, CSV, or Excel output for any use case

📊 Collect up to 1,000,000 book records per run with cover images, ISBNs, download links, and ratings.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Feature	This Actor	Manual Browsing	Generic Scrapers
5 search types	✅	✅	❌
Ebook-only filtering	✅	✅	❌
Cover image URLs	✅	❌	Varies
Download link extraction	✅	Manual	❌
Bulk collection (1M+ records)	✅	❌	❌
Structured JSON/CSV output	✅	❌	Varies
Scheduled runs	✅	❌	❌

Get structured book data at scale without manual browsing or copy-pasting.

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🚀 How to use

1. Create an Apify account - Sign up free with $5 credit
2. Open the Open Library Scraper - Navigate to the actor page on Apify
3. Enter your search query - Type a title, author name, or subject
4. Select search type and filters - Choose Books, Authors, Subjects, etc. and enable ebook filtering if needed
5. Click Start - The actor collects matching records and delivers structured data

⏱️ A typical run with 10 books completes in under 30 seconds.

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💼 Business use cases

📚 Library Management Build digital catalogs with ISBNs and cover images Track edition availability across languages Identify books available as free ebooks Cross-reference holdings with Open Library records	📊 Publishing Research Analyze edition counts and publication histories Track subject trends by publication year Compare publisher catalogs across genres Monitor new releases in specific subject areas
🖥️ App Development Feed book metadata into recommendation engines Populate product databases with cover images and ISBNs Build reading list applications with ratings Create book discovery tools with subject filtering	🎓 Education Curate subject-specific reading lists for courses Find free ebook versions of required textbooks Build bibliographies with full publication details Track available formats for accessibility planning

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🔌 Automating Open Library Scraper

Integrate the Open Library Scraper into your workflow using the Apify API or client libraries.

Node.js:

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor("parseforge/open-library-scraper").call({
  searchQuery: "Space",
  searchType: "books",
  maxItems: 50
});
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Python:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("parseforge/open-library-scraper").call(run_input={
    "searchQuery": "Space",
    "searchType": "books",
    "maxItems": 50
})
items = list(client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items())
print(items)

• 📖 Apify API reference
• 🐍 Python client docs
• 📦 Node.js client docs

Schedules: Set up recurring runs to track new book additions, monitor ebook availability, or build growing datasets of book metadata. Configure daily, weekly, or monthly schedules from the Apify Console.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

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🔌 Integrate with any app

• 🔗 Make (Integromat) - Connect book data to Google Sheets, Airtable, or any of 1,500+ apps
• 🔗 Zapier - Trigger workflows when new book records are collected
• 🔗 Slack - Get notified when a book data run completes
• 🔗 Airbyte - Stream book metadata into your data warehouse
• 🔗 GitHub - Store book datasets in repositories for version control
• 🔗 Google Drive - Automatically save CSV exports to shared folders

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💡 Pro Tip: Combine the Open Library Scraper with the Crossref Scraper to match book ISBNs with DOI metadata and citation counts.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form and we will get back to you within 24 hours. We are happy to help with custom setups, integrations, or feature requests.

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Disclaimer: This actor is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Open Library or the Internet Archive. It accesses publicly available data through Open Library's public API. Use responsibly and in accordance with applicable terms of service.