Searching the Open Library

How do I search for books in the Open Library?

All of the data about books in the Open Library is indexed by keyword. You can type in any keywords in any order, whether for an author's name, a title, a subject, a description of the books, words in the table of contents, or any combination of those.

I typed in keywords, but I got way too many hits. How can I narrow down my search?

I'm getting too many hits. How can I do a more precise search?

Advanced search gives you the possibility to search on individual fields in the bibliographic records to increase the precision of your searches. Advanced search lets you search the following fields:

• Title
• Author
• Subject
• ISBN
• Publisher
• Description
• Date range
• Scanned books only

You can enter keywords into any one or more of the search boxes for a given search. For scanned books only, click on the box by that phrase.

Do I have to type in the title exactly as it is? Does the author have to be family name before given name?

No, the advanced search is a keyword search on specific fields so you can enter the words and names in any order, and as complete as you wish. Entering more keywords will probably mean getting fewer and more precise retrievals, but if you don't see what you expected you might try the search again with fewer terms. This can be helpful in situations where the data in the database does not contain full information, such as when it is missing subtitles, or does not contain spelled out forms of the forenames of authors.

I know the book I'm looking for was published around 1950. Can I just look for books from that year or decade?

I've done a search and retrieved over a thousand books! Now what should I do?

In a large database like the Open Library it is fairly common that a search will bring up more retrieved items than one can reasonable look through. On the right hand side of the results page there is a box that pulls out some key characteristics of the retrieved set and provides links for narrowing the set by these "facets." In most cases the facets are limited to the top 5 values in the set for that facet. The facets available are:

• Available: limit to items with full text available. This facet also lets you select books that are available for [scan on demand] scanning.
• Subjects: select by subject heading
• Publication date: select by date range
• Publishers: select by the name of the publisher

Each value in the facet area shows how many books will remain in the retrieved set when that facet is chosen.

I chose a facet, but it narrowed my set too much. Can I undo the facet?

Yes. Immediately below the Open Library banner you will see a "breadcrumb" trail for the facet you have chosen. It will look like:

Selected facets: subjects: Indiana -- Fiction. (x) > (none)

By clicking on the "x" in parentheses following the facet name, you will remove that facet from your retrieval and return to your previous results.

Can I choose more than one facet?

You can choose only one facet on each retrieval page, but as you narrow your results you can continue to select facets that are presented. So on the first page you may narrow by author. Once the results have been limited to that author, the page will offer facets from this newly narrowed set, such as date ranges. You can continue to narrow by facets until you arrive at or select a single book.

Each of the facets chosen will show in the breadcrumb trail, and you can remove any of the facets you see there by clicking on the "x", even those that are not in the right-most position.