How to Use Open Library Search | Open Library
It looks like you're offline.
Donate ♥
English (en)
العربية (ar)
Čeština (cs)
Deutsch (de)
English (en)
Español (es)
Français (fr)
हिंदी (hi)
Hrvatski (hr)
Italiano (it)
Português (pt)
Română (ro)
Sardu (sc)
తెలుగు (te)
Українська (uk)
中文 (zh)
Filipino (tl)
Last edited by Mek
May 19, 2026 | History
Edit
How to Use Open Library Search
Open Library Search is a very powerful and under-utilized tool. You can specify different fields in the search box to narrow your search results by fields such as author, subject, publication year, and more, listed below. This guide is organized in three sections:
1) Field cheatsheet — how to construct a query and simple examples.
2) Demo — an example of creating a civil rights curriculum for high school students, to showcase the possibilities when fields are combined.
3) Advanced topics — for users who want to further refine queries or use the developer API.
Query cheatsheet
You can test your queries by pasting the query string directly in the search box on Open Library. This will show results in the UI. Certain fields, such as lexile, are not shown in the UI. To see results including those values, you can constructing the URL using parameters as described below in the Developer API section and pasting the string in the browser.
Field<br>What the field means<br>Possible values<br>Example queries → what they find
title<br>Words that appear in the title.<br>Any words.<br>title:flammable → “flammable” anywhere in the title
title:"pride and prejudice" → the entire phrase is in the title
author<br>Author/creator names<br>Possible values are in this list of author names.<br>author:solnit → author field matches “solnit”
author:"rebecca solnit" → phrase-style match when quoted
subject<br>What the book is about.<br>Community members contribute “subject tags”, which are fuzzy, open-field phrases. There is no official master list of subject tags, and books about the same concept may have different tags (for example, a book may have “tennis” but not “sports”, or vice versa.)<br>subject:tennis rules → subjects include tennis and rules
subject:"civil rights" → subject includes the entire phrase “civil rights”
language<br>Language of at least one edition.<br>ISO 639-2 three-letter codes such as eng, spa, jpn.<br>language:spa → at least one Spanish edition
publisher<br>Publisher name on editions.<br>There is no official list, and there can be many variants of strings to refer to one publisher.<br>publisher:harper → publisher string contains “harper”.
ebook_access<br>Online readability for the work (best edition’s access level in the index).<br>no_ebook, unclassified, printdisabled (preview-only for print-disabled users), borrowable, public.<br>ebook_access:no_ebook AND -ia:* → a range spanning anything borrowable or public
ebook_access:no_ebook AND -ia:* AND readinglog_count:[25 TO *] → highly requested books that the Internet Archive does not have
publish_year<br>Publication year of edition(s).<br>Integers; Solr range syntax [low TO high], [* TO YYYY] for “up to”.<br>publish_year:2002 → published in 2002
publish_year:[* TO 1800] → published any time before 1800
publish_year:[1900 TO 1950] → published between 1900–1950
number_of_pages<br>Page count for an edition (when the catalog has it).<br>Non-negative integers; Solr range syntax.<br>number_of_pages:[400 TO *] → editions with 400+ pages
first_publish_year<br>First year the work was published (not a specific edition’s year).<br>Integers; Solr range syntax. Note: there is no dedicated UI for this on the main search yet—type it in the query box.<br>first_publish_year:[1200 TO 1400] → first published between 1200 and 1400.
readinglog_count<br>Total user adds to reading logs (Want to Read + Currently Reading + Already Read).<br>Non-negative counts; Solr range syntax.<br>readinglog_count:[100 TO *] → on more than 100 patrons’ shelves combined.
ratings_count<br>Number of star ratings on the work.<br>Non-negative counts; Solr range syntax.<br>ratings_count:[100 TO *] → more than 100 ratings.
lexile<br>Lexile measure of reading difficulty (when the work has a score).<br>Score ranges; most works have no Lexile in the index.<br>lexile:[100 TO 900] → works between 100–900 reading level
See demo below for more explanation.
osp_count<br>Open Syllabus Project count—how often the work appears in OSP’s college syllabus collection (aggregate only).<br>Non-negative counts; Solr ranges. Does not list which schools or courses. Sort in the URL with &sort=osp_count+desc (not in the main search UI).<br>osp_count:[100 TO *] → at least 100 syllabus hits in OSP data
subject:"civil rights" AND osp_count:[100 TO *] → civil rights titles with strong OSP presence
birth_date<br>Author birth year<br>Four-digit years when indexed.<br>birth_date:1973 → authors born in 1973.
ddc<br>Dewey Decimal Classification on editions.<br>Dewey numbers; wildcards (200*, 2*) and ranges; DDC browse.<br>ddc:200* → matches e.g. 200, 200.25 (not 002.5 for 2*)
ddc:[150 TO 160] → inclusive Dewey band
lcc<br>Library of Congress call...