MCP Open Library MCP Server

Mcp open library mcp server lets Claude, Cursor and other MCP clients work with MCP Open Library directly. MCP server for the Open Library.

What MCP Open Library does

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for the Open Library API that enables AI assistants to search for book and author information.

This project implements an MCP server that provides tools for AI assistants to interact with the Open Library. It allows searching for book information by title, searching for authors by name, retrieving detailed author information using their Open Library key, and getting URLs for author photos using their Open Library ID (OLID). The server returns structured data for book and author information.

Key capabilities

• Book Search by Title — Search for books using their title (get_book_by_title)
• Author Search by Name — Search for authors using their name (get_authors_by_name)
• Get Author Details — Retrieve detailed information for a specific author using their Open Library key (get_author_info)
• Get Author Photo — Get the URL for an author's photo using their Open Library ID (OLID) (get_author_photo)
• Get Book Cover — Get the URL for a book's cover image using various identifiers (ISBN, OCLC, LCCN, OLID, ID) (get_book_cover)
• Get Book by ID — Retrieve detailed book information using various identifiers (ISBN, LCCN, OCLC, OLID) (get_book_by_id)

Installing the mcp open library mcp server

The server is distributed via npm as @smithery/cli, so most clients can run it without a manual build step. Add it to your MCP client's configuration and restart the client to pick it up — the copy-paste configs for Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor are on this page.

Configuration

Before the server will start you need to supply one environment variable: MCP_PROXY_AUTH_TOKEN. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than committing them.

Where it fits

Developer-tool servers are usually the first ones people connect, because they turn "help me with this code" into an assistant that can actually read the repo and act on it. MCP Open Library sits in that group. Worth comparing against the other developer tools servers in this directory before you commit to one, since several overlap in scope but differ sharply in setup cost and permissions.

Practical notes

• This server runs locally, so it operates with whatever access your machine and its credentials already have. Scope that deliberately rather than by default.
• It will not start until its required credentials are present, so set those before wondering why the tools never appear.
• Maintained by 8enSmith, written in TypeScript.
• MCP clients ask for confirmation before each tool call by default. Keep that on while you learn what the mcp open library mcp server actually does with your data.
• Every entry in this directory is reviewed by hand before it goes live, and details are checked against the project's own documentation.