Developer Center / APIs / Authors API

Searching for Authors

You can search for authors using the https://openlibrary.org/search/authors.json search API which accepts q as a query parameter:

https://openlibrary.org/search/authors.json?q=j%20k%20rowling

{
  numFound: 1,
  start: 0,
  numFoundExact: true,
  docs: [
    {
      key: "OL23919A",
      text: [...],
      type: "author",
      name: "J. K. Rowling",
      alternate_names: [...],
      birth_date: "31 July 1965",
      top_work: "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone",
      work_count: 162,
      top_subjects: [...],
      _version_: 1702166143068799000
    },
  ]
}

Data on Individual Authors

Once you have the identifier key of an author of interest, e.g. /authors/OL23919A, you can fetch their complete data by visiting their Author page as .json, .rdf, .yml:

e.g. https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A.json

Batch Requests

Currently, we do not have a way to get the full data for multiple authors in one request. However, you can get a subset (name, subjects, ratings, and more) by using the search API with a query like key:(/authors/OL3874685A OR /authors/OL1394244A). Example search and example API call.

Works by an Author

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A/works.json

The above URL will return 50 works by an author.

You can append ?limit=1000 to return the first 1000 works by an author like so:
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1394244A/works.json?limit=100

If you want to paginate, you can set offset like so:
https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1394244A/works.json?offset=50

Gotchas

Note that by default, navigating to https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A will redirect to https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A/J._K._Rowling (appending the human readable slug "J._K._Rowling"). Adding .json to the end of the slug (e.g. https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A/J._K._Rowling.json) will not work. You must first remove the human readable slug and append .json directly to the end of the author's key, e.g. https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL23919A.json.