Books and libraries
Digital libraries and archives of books, films, newspapers and software. 7 resources; API, key, license and embedding quoted from each site's own pages, checked Oct 23, 2026.
Project Gutenberg
It is one of the largest clean, proofread corpora of classic literature, and the whole catalog and text set can be downloaded in bulk.
API, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions
Open Library
Almost every page has a machine-readable twin: add .json to a work or author URL and you get the structured record behind it.
API, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions
Internet Archive
Behind every item is a folder of original files and metadata you can fetch directly, from old radio shows to scanned books and forgotten home movies.
API, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions
Library of Congress
Any search page on loc.gov can be turned into structured data, so whole collections of historic photos or maps become something you can query and plot.
API, no keyDownloadCommercial: conditions
Europeana
One query can pull paintings, manuscripts, newspapers and sound recordings from institutions all over Europe, filtered to items that are free to reuse.
APIDownloadCommercial: conditions
Digital Public Library of America
It stitches together small local archives and big institutions, so one search can surface a town historical society's photos next to national collections.
License unclear
archive.today
It keeps frozen, script-free copies of pages that later change or vanish, so you can see what a page said on a given day.
License unclear
Side by side
| Resource | API | Key | Data download | Commercial use | Embed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Gutenberg A volunteer-built library of free eBooks, mostly older works out of US copyright, offered as HTML, EPUB, Kindle and plain text, with full catalog dumps in RDF and CSV. |
Official API · Free | No | Yes (rdf, xml, csv, marc, txt, epub, html) | Commercial use with conditions | Can be embedded |
| Open Library An open, editable catalog of books, editions and authors run by the Internet Archive, with JSON APIs for search, covers and records, plus full monthly data dumps. |
Official API | No | Yes (tsv, json) | Commercial use with conditions | Embedding unclear |
| Internet Archive A non-profit digital library of uploaded books, films, audio, software and web snapshots, with open APIs for search, item metadata and file download. |
Official API | No | Yes (varies per item (pdf, epub, mp3, mp4, txt, ...), json) | Commercial use with conditions | Embedding unclear |
| Library of Congress The US national library's online collections of photos, maps, manuscripts, newspapers, recordings and books, with a keyless JSON API plus IIIF image, full-text and streaming services. |
Official API · Free | No | Yes (json, xml, jpg, tiff, pdf, txt) | Commercial use with conditions | Embedding unclear |
| Europeana A single search portal and set of APIs over records from European museums, libraries and archives, with CC0 metadata and per-item rights labels for the linked images, texts, audio and video. |
Official API | Yes | Yes (xml) | Commercial use with conditions | Embedding with conditions |
| Digital Public Library of America A national portal that gathers catalog records for photos, books, maps, recordings and documents held by US libraries, archives and museums, with a JSON API that needs a key. |
API unclear | — | — | Commercial use unclear | Embedding unclear |
| archive.today A web page archive: save a snapshot of any page (text plus a screenshot copy) under a short permanent link, and search saved snapshots by domain or URL. |
API unclear | — | — | Commercial use unclear | Embedding unclear |