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. The actor keeps to roughly 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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Further reading: ISBN Database Access and Other Open Reference Data in Bulk