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 is listed with 1 API on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Library, WorldCat, Discovery, and Bibliographic Records.

OCLC’s developer surface includes engineering blog and 6 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

7.0/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only Heartbeat 100/100 alive Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

1 API

Library WorldCat Discovery Bibliographic Records

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 7.0/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 2.0 / 17

Access Clarity 1.3 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.9 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 3.3 / 9

Regulatory Posture 0.9 / 15

Agent readiness — 1/100 · 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

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

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.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

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/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 0.0 — up to +25.0 composite points
Access Clarity scores 7.9 — up to +18.4 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 11.9 — up to +17.6 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/oclc/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/oclc to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
Book Publishing (ONIX / ISBN / EPUB supply chain)	standard	49.1	-	-
IIIF and Cultural Heritage (GLAM image interoperability, Linked Art)	standard	49.1	-	-
UK G-Cloud Suppliers (UK public-sector cloud procurement)	standard	49.1	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

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 ...

OCLC API pricing

Not yet checked against OCLC's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against OCLC's documentation. All 5 limits →

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

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

RateLimits

Commercial 2

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

Company 3

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

LinkedIn

Blog

Blog

Source (apis.yml)

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
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
position: Consuming
access: 3rd-Party
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/oclc.png
tags:
- Library
- WorldCat
- Discovery
- Bibliographic Records
tags_raw:
- Library
- WorldCat
- Discovery
- Bibliographic
created: '2025-01-08'
modified: '2026-09-16'
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/oclc/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
specificationVersion: '0.23'
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/oclc-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/oclc-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/oclc-finops.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://oclc.org
- 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

OCLC API — frequently asked questions

Does OCLC have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 1 API from OCLC, including OCLC.

How much does the OCLC API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for OCLC, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the OCLC API ready for AI agents?

OCLC has a Kin Score of 7.0 out of 100 (minimal) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.6 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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Tools for providers

9 MCP tools reach this

find_providersBrowse and filter every provider in the catalog.
get_provider_artifactsEvery artifact this provider publishes, grouped by type.
get_provider_operationsEvery operation across all of their OpenAPIs — one call instead of parsing every spec.
get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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