Adding and Editing Books

Adding new books to Open Library and editing the records of existing books are quite similar. In either case, we recommend having a copy of the book available so you can enter as much information about the edition as possible - but any information you provide is greatly appreciated.

Adding Books

1. Prior to adding a new book, please search Open Library to see if we already have a record of the work.
2. If there are no results, try an Author search (type "author:Name" in the search field) to see if we know about the work under another title or in a different language.
3. If a record of the work exists, we'll provide a list of editions at the bottom of the work's page. The table is initially sorted by online availability (to read an edition right now) but clicking the "EDITION" header will re-sort the editions by published date, which may make scanning the list easier.
4. If we don't have a record of the particular edition you want to add, click the "Add another?" link located below the edition count, above the table of existing editions. This way, we'll pre-populate your new edition record with the pertinent information we already have about the work.
5. If you can't find any record of the work, add it to Open Library.

When you're adding a book, every field on the page is required except ID Number. Please provide the title and author (if they're not pre-filled from the Work), the publisher of your edition and the date of publication. These are the pieces of information we use to separate your edition from every other edition.

If you have an ID number, that's very helpful, of course.

Congratulations, you've successfully added your book - but if you want to add more information about it, now's the time.

Editing Books

After adding the basic information about a new book, or if you elect to edit an existing record of a work or edition, you'll be provided with the book editing page.

Some of the information you enter here is attached to the work, like website links and excerpts (accessed from the tabs at the top of the form), but most of it is attached to the edition.

Librarian Mode

We try to provide examples of appropriate data for every field, and we try to provide separate fields for every piece of data about a book. For example, we have separate title and subtitle fields, and separate published date and copyright date fields. If you can't find a field for some information, it may be hidden behind Library Mode.

Initially, some of the more esoteric data fields, like classifications (i.e. Dewey Decimal), whether the book is part of a series, and alternate titles, are hidden to make things a bit simpler. Reveal them by clicking "Turn on Librarian Mode" at the top-right of the Edition form page.