Wikisource

aid: wikisource
name: Wikisource
description: 'Wikisource is the Wikimedia Foundation''s free library of source texts — public-domain and freely-licensed books,
  historical documents, legal texts, constitutions, speeches, and other transcribed primary-source works in over 70 languages.
  The platform exposes its content through the same API surfaces as all MediaWiki installations: the MediaWiki Action API
  (action=query|parse|edit at /w/api.php), the MediaWiki Core REST API (/w/rest.php/v1/ for page CRUD, search, history, and
  transforms), and the legacy Wikimedia REST API v1 (/api/rest_v1/ for cached reads at up to 200 RPS). All APIs are free at
  point of use and governed by the Wikimedia API usage guidelines — a contactable User-Agent is mandatory and serial requests
  are preferred over parallel bursts.'
url: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Wikisource
image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/120px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png
specificationVersion: '0.19'
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
x-type: opensource
x-category: Open Data
x-tier: 2
x-tier-reason: Sister Wikimedia project; free public-domain text library with full MediaWiki API surface
tags:
- Open Data
- Open Knowledge
- Literature
- Historical Documents
- Public Domain
- Transcription
- Primary Sources
- Non-Profit
- Open Source
apis:
- name: MediaWiki Action API
  description: The primary programmatic interface to Wikisource, exposed at /w/api.php on each language subdomain. Operations
    are dispatched via the action= parameter (query, parse, edit, upload, login, patrol, ...). Key for reading transcribed
    texts, searching categories, and editing or proofread-status updating. JSON is the recommended response format. Requests
    must carry a contactable User-Agent header.
  humanURL: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
  baseURL: https://en.wikisource.org/w/api.php
  tags:
  - Action API
  - Read
  - Write
  - Edit
  - Search
  - Parse
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
  - type: Sandbox
    url: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox
  - type: Tutorials
    url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Tutorial
  - type: Etiquette
    url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
- name: MediaWiki Core REST API
  description: Modern REST surface available on Wikisource at /w/rest.php/v1/. Provides page reads (source, HTML, bare metadata),
    full-text search, file metadata, page history, revision retrieval and comparison, and wikitext-to-HTML / HTML-to-wikitext
    transforms. Well-suited for integrations that need standard HTTP verbs rather than the action= dispatch style.
  humanURL: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:REST_API
  baseURL: https://en.wikisource.org/w/rest.php/v1
  tags:
  - REST API
  - Core
  - Pages
  - Search
  - History
  - Transforms
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:REST_API/Reference
  - type: Sandbox
    url: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:RestSandbox
  - type: APIPortal
    url: https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/Core_REST_API
- name: Wikimedia REST API v1
  description: Caching-optimised read API available at /api/rest_v1/ on each Wikisource language subdomain. Provides page
    summaries, full HTML, media lists, and language links for Wikisource pages. Backed by Varnish CDN; anonymous read traffic
    is limited to approximately 200 requests per second per client. Provide a contactable User-Agent; GET is preferred for
    cacheability.
  humanURL: https://en.wikisource.org/api/rest_v1/
  baseURL: https://en.wikisource.org/api/rest_v1
  tags:
  - REST API
  - Cached
  - Summaries
  - HTML
  - Read
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://en.wikisource.org/api/rest_v1/
  - type: Specification
    url: https://en.wikisource.org/api/rest_v1/?spec
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://wikisource.org
- type: Website
  title: English Wikisource
  url: https://en.wikisource.org
- type: Documentation
  url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Main_page
- type: APIPortal
  url: https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
- type: APICatalog
  url: https://api.wikimedia.org/wiki/API_catalog
- type: Foundation
  url: https://wikimediafoundation.org/
- type: Governance
  url: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation
- type: License
  url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
  title: CC BY-SA 4.0 (text content)
- type: Policy
  url: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Wikimedia_Foundation_API_Usage_Guidelines
  title: API Usage Guidelines
- type: Policy
  url: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API:Etiquette
  title: API Etiquette
- type: TermsOfService
  url: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/wikimedia
- type: SourceCode
  url: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/
  title: Wikimedia Gerrit (canonical source)
- type: Status
  url: https://www.wikimediastatus.net/
- type: BulkDownload
  url: https://dumps.wikimedia.org/
  title: Wikimedia Database Dumps (includes Wikisource)
- type: Plans
  url: plans/wikisource-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/wikisource-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/wikisource-finops.yml
features:
- name: 70+ Language Editions
  description: Wikisource operates in over 70 language editions; each subdomain ({lang}.wikisource.org) exposes the full MediaWiki
    API surface at the same paths.
- name: Public-Domain Source Texts
  description: Hosts transcribed books, legal texts, constitutions, speeches, and historical documents no longer under copyright
    — all freely accessible via the API.
- name: Proofread Page Extension
  description: Wikisource uses the ProofreadPage MediaWiki extension; its status levels (without text, not proofread, problematic,
    proofread, validated) are queryable via the Action API.
- name: Wikitext-to-HTML Transforms
  description: Convert raw wikitext (including Wikisource templates and page-scan transclusions) to rendered HTML via /transform/wikitext/to/html/{title}.
- name: Cached Anonymous Reads at 200 RPS
  description: The REST API v1 layer is Varnish-cached, supporting anonymous read bursts up to ~200 requests/s per client
    without authentication.
- name: OAuth 2.0 Write Access
  description: Page edits and proofread-status updates authenticate via OAuth 2.0 tokens issued at meta.wikimedia.org — the
    same mechanism across all Wikimedia projects.
- name: Bulk Text Dumps
  description: Full periodic XML dumps of every Wikisource language edition are available at dumps.wikimedia.org for offline
    corpus processing.
useCases:
- name: Digitised Literature and Corpus Research
  description: Access transcribed works of literature, philosophy, and science for NLP corpus building, stylometric analysis,
    or training data curation.
- name: Legal and Historical Document Retrieval
  description: Retrieve constitutions, treaties, legislation, and court opinions as structured wikitext or rendered HTML for
    legal research platforms.
- name: AI Grounding with Primary Sources
  description: Ground LLM responses with primary-source citations rather than encyclopedic summaries — page summaries and
    full HTML available via the REST API.
- name: Multilingual Text Collection
  description: Pull source texts across 70+ language editions for multilingual NLP models, translation studies, or cross-lingual
    information retrieval.
- name: Proofread Status Monitoring
  description: Query and update ProofreadPage statuses to build community dashboards or automated quality-assurance workflows
    for text digitisation projects.
- name: Offline Reading Applications
  description: Consume periodic bulk dumps to ship offline-readable collections of public-domain literature to schools and
    low-connectivity environments.
integrations:
- name: Wikipedia
  description: Wikipedia articles often link to Wikisource for full-text versions of cited primary sources via interwiki links.
- name: Wikidata
  description: Wikisource works are described as Wikidata items (edition type Q3331189); author pages link to Wikidata QIDs
    for authority control.
- name: Wikimedia Commons
  description: Page-scan images underlying the ProofreadPage workflow are hosted on Commons and accessed via the Commons Action
    API.
- name: Internet Archive
  description: Many Wikisource digitisation projects use scans sourced from the Internet Archive's Open Library collection.
solutions:
- name: Free Public-Domain Text Library
  description: A non-profit, volunteer-curated repository of transcribed source texts funded by the Wikimedia Foundation —
    freely readable and downloadable with no API keys required.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com