Open Library

📸 Real response, captured by us

Not a mockup — this is what Open Library actually returned when we verified it on 23 Oct 2026 (in 1138 ms).

{
  "numFound": 461,
  "start": 0,
  "numFoundExact": true,
  "num_found": 461,
  "documentation_url": "https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/search",
  "q": "the hobbit",
  "offset": null,
  "docs": [
    {
      "author_name": [
        "J.R.R. Tolkien"
      ],
      "first_publish_year": 1937,
      "title": "The Hobbit"
    }
  ]
}

💻 Copy-paste code

Three ways to call Open Library — pick your weapon.

// Open Library — no build step, no library. Just fetch.
const res = await fetch("https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=the+hobbit&limit=1&fields=title,author_name,first_publish_year");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);

# Open Library with Python requests
import requests

r = requests.get("https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=the+hobbit&limit=1&fields=title,author_name,first_publish_year")
print(r.status_code)
print(r.json())

# Open Library from your terminal
curl "https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=the+hobbit&limit=1&fields=title,author_name,first_publish_year"

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