Books and libraries · by Internet Archive (non-profit)
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.
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: conditionsFor your project
- Official API
- Official API Add delays between requests for bulk operations; honor 429 Too Many Requests and Retry-After; send a descriptive User-Agent.
“A complete list of the Internet Archive APIs and services is at Tools and APIs” archive.org/developers/
- Key
- Not needed
- Formats
- JSON
- Data download
- Yes varies per item (pdf, epub, mp3, mp4, txt, ...), json
- License
- Varies per item (uploader's statement or Creative Commons license); archive.org Terms of Use Each item carries its own rights; the Archive does not guarantee copyright status
- Commercial use
- Commercial use with conditions
“As a result, there are now millions of works available through the Archive and most are available only for “non commercial use” and “with attribution.”” help.archive.org/help/rights/
- Credit
- Credit depends on the item
“The person who uploads an item often provides information related to use rights, either by way of directly entering it in the description field or by selection of a Creative Commons license.” help.archive.org/help/rights/
- Embedding
- Embedding unclear
- Using the website
- Free
Read on Internet Archive's own pages on Oct 23, 2026 · license or terms · API docs. Check the license page before you ship.
For your agent
A request your code or agent can make with no key:
https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php?q=collection%3Anasa&fl%5B%5D=identifier&fl%5B%5D=title&rows=10&output=json- Search with advancedsearch.php (output=json), then GET archive.org/metadata/{identifier} for the file list; download from archive.org/download/{identifier}/{file}. Send a descriptive User-Agent and back off on 429.
- Check each item's own rights statement or CC license before reuse; most items are for non-commercial use only.
- Send a descriptive User-Agent, add delays for bulk jobs and honor 429/Retry-After.
- Never treat the Archive's metadata as a guarantee of copyright status.
Paste into your agent: Read https://agentgid.com/resources/internet-archive/agent.md before using Internet Archive.
What you can build
- A themed player for public-domain or CC-licensed audio from one collection (e.g. old-time radio)
- A research tool that searches a collection and lists items with their stated license
- A reader app for public-domain scanned books using item metadata and OCR text files
More in Books and libraries
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.
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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.
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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.
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Europeana
One query can pull paintings, manuscripts, newspapers and sound recordings from institutions all over Europe, filtered to items that are free to reuse.
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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.
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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.
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