OCLC website screenshot

OCLC

The Discovery API allows you to surface both WorldCat and WorldCat Discovery central index data in search results, including: Materials held by your library and ...

OCLC publishes 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Library, WorldCat, Discovery, and Bibliographic.

OCLC’s developer surface includes engineering blog and 2 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
6.3/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-20 · rubric v0.12.0
AccessFreemium
1 APIs
LibraryWorldCatDiscoveryBibliographic

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-20 · rubric v0.12.0
Composite quality — 6.3/100 · minimal
Contract Quality 0.0 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 0.4 / 17
Access Clarity 2.7 / 17
Operational Transparency 0.9 / 11
Contract Governance 0.0 / 10
Discoverability 3.5 / 9
Regulatory Posture 1.7 / 15
Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Education & Research regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/oclc: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 1

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

OCLC

The Discovery API allows you to surface both WorldCat and WorldCat Discovery central index data in search results, including: Materials held by your library and ...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Oclc Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Oclc Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Oclc Finops

FINOPS

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Oclc Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Company 2

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn
LinkedIn
 Blog
Blog

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: oclc
name: OCLC
description: 'The Discovery API allows you to surface both WorldCat and WorldCat Discovery central index data in search results,
  including: Materials held by your library and ...'
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
position: Consumer
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/oclc.png
tags:
- Library
- WorldCat
- Discovery
- Bibliographic
created: '2025-01-08'
modified: '2026-04-28'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/oclc/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
specificationVersion: '0.23'
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/oclc-domain-security.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oclc
- type: Blog
  url: https://www.oclc.org/en/news.html
apis:
- aid: oclc:oclc
  name: OCLC
  description: 'The Discovery API allows you to surface both WorldCat and WorldCat Discovery central index data in search
    results, including: Materials held by your library and ...'
  humanURL: https://www.oclc.org/developer/api/oclc-apis/worldcat-discovery-api.en.html
  tags:
  - Library
  - WorldCat
  - Discovery
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.oclc.org/developer/api/oclc-apis/worldcat-discovery-api.en.html
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com