Developer Center

Welcome to the developer hub of Open Library. This page links you to all of the information and external resources that will help you get started accessing data from, integrating with, or contributing to the Open Library platform.

Accessing Data
Open Library offers free, public, low-volume Web APIs and bulk Monthly Data Dumps for accessing book and author catalog data. Here are examples of partners making use of our data in the wild. Our Web APIs are ideal for book services which need to make infrequent, real-time searches for specific books, their authors, and their availability. For projects which require importing books, authors, or covers in bulk, please kindly download our free data dumps.

Client Libraries
We maintain an Official (Python) Client Library for accessing data and writing bots. The are also unofficial client libraries written in Ruby and Elixir.

Contributing
OpenLibrary.org is an open source project. If you'd like to contribute as on Open Library developer, please visit our CONTRIBUTING guide on Github and explore our volunteer page. Aside from the documentation here, you may also find Open Library's github wiki useful for getting started.

Technologies
Open Library is written in python and uses the (now arcane) Infogami web framework, which itself is built on top of web.py. See the /about/tech page to learn more about all the technologies powering the Open Library service.

Partners
Are you a library, publisher, or book vendor trying to integrate your catalog with Open Library previews, lending, data, or book covers? Check out our partner resources.