Using the API

The WorldCat Basic API is available to any person for non-commercial use up to 1,000 queries a day.

• Search WorldCat with OpenSearch and get RSS or Atom responses.
• Find books, video, music and more in the WorldCat database
• Get Titles, Authors, ISBNs and OCLC numbers
• Get records in standard bibliographic citation formats (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian)
• Get links back to WorldCat.org for more information including geographically-sorted Library information

Signup for the WorldCat Basic API

Go to the OCLC Service Configuration application for API key management. You will need to sign into (or create) a WorldCat.org Affiliate account in order to sign in for the API key management.

What is WorldCat?

WorldCat is a global collection of library content contributed by over 70,000 libraries from around the world. It includes information of over 225 million items found in these libraries. Besides a massive collection of book titles, there are all kinds of items including videos, music, maps, magazines, special collections and many other kinds of material in over 470 languages.

Currently WorldCat can be searched for free at WorldCat.org. And today there are WorldCat widgets that enable anyone to embed WorldCat search results into their websites found at the WorldCat Affiliate Services site.