Open Library Data Dumps

Open Library provides dumps of all its data, generated every month. Most of the data dumps are formatted as tab separated files with the following columns:

• type - type of record (/type/edition, /type/work etc.)
  
• key - unique key of the record (/books/OL1M etc.)
  
• revision - revision number of the record
  
• last_modified - last modified timestamp
  
• JSON - the complete record in JSON format

Dumps

• editions dump (~ 9.2G)
  
• works dump (~ 2.9G)
  
• authors dump (~ 0.5G)
  
• all types dump (~ 12.4G): includes editions, works, authors, redirects, etc.
  
• complete dump (~ 29.6G): also includes past revisions of all the records in Open Library
  
• ratings dump (~ 5M): with columns: "Work Key, Edition Key (optional), Rating, Date"
  
• reading log dump (~ 65M): with columns "Work Key, Edition Key (optional), Shelf, Date"
  
• redirects dump (~ 50M)
  
• deletes dump (~ 75M)
  
• lists dump (~ 30M)
  
• other dump (~ 10M)
  
• covers metadata dump (~ 70M): with columns "id, width, height, created"

For past dumps, see: https://archive.org/details/ol_exports?sort=-publicdate

Downloading the dumps take too long? Checkout the link above and download via torrent for higher speeds!

Format of JSON records

A JSON schema for the various types is located at https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary-client/tree/master/olclient/schemata

• Author Records: JSON serialization of a type/author
  
• Edition Records: JSON serialization of a type/edition
  
• Work Records: JSON serialization of a type/work

Using Open Library Data Dumps

This guide by contributor on the LibrariesHacked GitHub about how to load Open Library's data dumps into PostgreSQL to make it more easily queriable:
https://github.com/LibrariesHacked/openlibrary-search

DuckDB

DuckDB is another easy tool to query the dump without much work.

For example:
If you wanted to get all the Wikidata IDs currently in the authors table:
`<br /> SELECT json_extract(column4, '$.remote_ids.wikidata') as wikidata_id<br /> FROM read_csv('ol_dump_authors_2024-07-31.txt.gz') <br /> WHERE wikidata_id IS NOT NULL <br /> LIMIT 100;<br /> `

GraphQL

DiFronzo on GitHub has produced a GraphQL proxy to search books using work, edition and ISBN with the Open Library API. Deployed with Deno and GraphQL:

https://github.com/DiFronzo/OpenLibrary-GraphQL
DiFronzo/OpenLibrary-GraphQL

OL Covers Dump

We do not yet have rolling monthly dumps of our book covers, despite a shared desire for their existence. Some historical cover dumps may be explored here:
https://archive.org/details/ol_data?tab=collection&query=identifier%3Acovers&sort=-addeddate

Most covers are archived in the following items. Note covers_0006 and covers_0007 are presently unavailable.

• https://archive.org/details/covers_0000
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0001
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0002
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0003
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0004
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0005
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0008
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0009
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0010
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0011
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0012
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0013
  
• https://archive.org/details/covers_0014