Skip to content

API overview

You can use OverDrive's APIs to search and find information about OverDrive titles, borrow and place holds on titles, and get reporting information. With the APIs, you can build products like library catalogs, web browser extensions, ereader applications, library software, and more.

If you're planning to integrate with OverDrive's APIs, you'll need to request the specific suite or suites of APIs you want, depending on what your implementation will do. See below for an overview of each API suite.

Discovery APIs

With the Discovery suite of APIs, you can:

  • Build a searchable index and public catalog of all titles in a customer's OverDrive collection.
  • Display a full record of metadata for a title in a customer's OverDrive collection, including cover art, a link to a sample of the content, and a link to the OverDrive page for the title.
  • Integrate titles from a customer's OverDrive collection into a searchable database of all the customer's assets, including physical items.
  • Search for titles in a customer's OverDrive collection by author, title, date, subject, and more.
  • Check the availability of a title in a customer's OverDrive collection.

Discovery APIs require you to use client authentication to authenticate your implementation with the OverDrive APIs. Learn more about Discovery APIs and client authentication.

Circulation APIs

With the Circulation suite of APIs, you can:

  • Authenticate users with their library or school credentials.
  • Allow a user to grant your application access to their OverDrive circulation activity (if you can't authenticate the user directly).
  • Allow a user to borrow, place a hold, download/open, and return a title from a customer's OverDrive collection.
  • Check the status of all titles in a user's library or school account (borrowed, on hold, expiration date, position in hold queue, etc.).
  • Track the availability of a list of titles in a customer's OverDrive collection and notify users when those titles become available.

Circulation APIs require you to use patron authentication or QR code authentication to authenticate users with your implementation. If you have access to users' library or school credentials (such as a library card number and PIN or student ID), then you can use patron authentication. If you don't have access to users' credentials or your authentication method isn't supported by OverDrive, you can authenticate users via QR code instead.

Learn more about Circulation APIs, patron authentication, and QR code authentication.

Reporting API (public libraries only)

With the Reporting API, you can see details about the titles that were borrowed from a specific collection during a specific time period.

The Reporting API requires you to use client authentication to authenticate your implementation with the OverDrive APIs. At this time, only OverDrive library customers can use this API, and requests to access it must be submitted by the library that wants to access it (not third-party vendors or developers). Learn more about the Reporting API and client authentication.

Other APIs

OverDrive's other APIs aren't tied to specific libraries or schools but give general information about titles offered by OverDrive. This suite currently includes:

  • Title Link API: Search for any title in the OverDrive catalog and get a share link with the title's description, metadata, and availability at nearby libraries in Libby.

The Title Link API requires you to use client authentication to authenticate your implementation with the OverDrive APIs. Learn more about the Title Link API and client authentication.