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Open Library Author Bibliography Scraper

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Open Library Author Bibliography Scraper

Resolve author names to their complete Open Library bibliography. Input a list of author names and get back full author profiles — bio, birth and death dates, external IDs (VIAF, Wikidata, ISNI, Goodreads), alternate name forms, photo URL, Wikipedia link, and a works list with first-publish year, edition count, subjects, and cover images.

What does it do?

For each author name you supply, this actor:

  1. Resolves the name — queries the Open Library author search API and returns the best-matching author record (exact name match preferred; falls back to the top search hit)
  2. Fetches the author profile — retrieves bio, birth/death dates, alternate names, photo, Wikipedia URL, and external authority IDs
  3. Paginates the full works list — fetches all works (or up to maxWorksPerAuthor) including title, first-publish year, edition count, subjects, and cover image URL

No authentication or proxy required. Open Library is a fully open API. The actor is rate-limited to approximately 1 request per second to stay respectful of Open Library's guidelines.

Output fields

Each result record contains:

Field Description
author_olid Open Library author identifier (e.g. OL26320A)
name Primary name as on Open Library
alternate_names Pipe-separated list of alternate name forms
birth_date Birth date string as stored on Open Library
death_date Death date string as stored on Open Library
bio Author biography
photo_url URL of author photo (medium size)
wikipedia_url Author's Wikipedia page URL
links JSON array of {title, url} external links
work_count Total number of works on Open Library
works JSON array of works — each has olid, title, first_publish_year, edition_count, subjects, cover_url
top_subjects Pipe-separated top subjects (pre-computed by Open Library)
top_work Title of the author's most prominent work
id_viaf VIAF (Virtual International Authority File) identifier
id_wikidata Wikidata entity ID
id_isni ISNI (International Standard Name Identifier)
id_goodreads Goodreads author ID
open_library_url Open Library page URL for this author

Input

{
  "authors": ["J.R.R. Tolkien", "Ursula K. Le Guin", "Philip K. Dick"],
  "maxItems": 10,
  "maxWorksPerAuthor": 50
}
Parameter Type Description
authors array (required) List of author names to look up
maxItems integer Maximum author records to return (0 = no limit)
maxWorksPerAuthor integer Maximum works per author (0 = all works)

Use cases

  • Literary databases — build comprehensive author-centric catalogs
  • Recommendation engines — enrich author profiles with verified bibliographies and external authority IDs
  • RAG pipelines — structure author knowledge for retrieval-augmented generation over book data
  • Library catalogs — cross-reference VIAF, Wikidata, and ISNI identifiers for authority control
  • Data journalism — research author output, publication history, and subject coverage

Notes

  • Open Library's works API does not include subjects or edition_count per-work in paginated responses; those fields are populated where available from the work record
  • top_subjects and top_work are sourced from Open Library's pre-computed search signals when available, providing higher-quality signals than per-run aggregation
  • The actor works as companion to the Open Library ISBN Book Metadata Scraper, which covers the ISBN/edition access pattern
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