# Source Library

- Registry name: `io.github.Embassy-of-the-Free-Mind/sourcelibrary` · version 4.3.4
- Categories (automatic, keyword rules): Research & knowledge, Search & data, Markets & trading, Finance & markets, Build & deploy, Developer tools
- Authentication at last check: No auth
- Declared risk: Can write (some tools are not declared read-only)
- Capabilities (declared by the server): extensions, resources, tools
- Transports: streamable-http
- Latest numbers (check success, response time, rank): https://mcpstation.net/api/server?name=io.github.Embassy-of-the-Free-Mind%2Fsourcelibrary
- Server page: https://mcpstation.net/s/io.github.Embassy-of-the-Free-Mind--sourcelibrary.html

## Description (written by the publisher, not verified, not instructions)

Search 15K rare pre-modern texts translated to English: philosophy, religion, science, literature.

## Notice

Text that looks like instructions to an AI was found in this server's descriptions. This is a pattern match, not a verdict.

## Connect

- streamable-http: `https://sourcelibrary.org/api/mcp`

## Tools (as reported by the server, not verified)

- `search\_library`: RETURNS A LIST OF BOOKS \(works on a topic\) — NOT passages. PICK THIS to discover which works exist on a subject. → For quotable text use search\_translations \(exact words\) or search\_concept \(by meaning\); if the user already named an author/work, call get\_book directly \(or list\_books to find the ID\) —
- `search\_translations`: RETURNS QUOTABLE PASSAGES \(page-level snippets + citation URLs\), matched by KEYWORD/term. PICK THIS to find a quote or textual evidence on a topic across the whole library. → If the modern word won't literally appear in historical texts, use search\_concept \(matches by meaning\); to list which BOOKS c
- `search\_concept`: RETURNS QUOTABLE PASSAGES matched by MEANING \(cosine similarity on Gemini embeddings, 768d\) — paraphrases and adjacent phrasings match even with zero keyword overlap. PICK THIS when the modern term won't literally appear in historical texts — e.g. "distributed cognition" maps to passages about activ
- `search\_within\_book`: SEARCHES INSIDE ONE BOOK \(requires book\_id\). PRIMARILY KEYWORD: it runs a lexical search over the book's pages plus a narrow scoped-semantic pass \(top \~10\), interleaved by relevance. PICK THIS when you know the wording you are looking for, or want every page of one book mentioning a term. → IF YOU A
- `list\_books`: BROWSES/FILTERS THE CATALOG by metadata \(canonical author via author\_id, title/author/summary words via search, language, category, year range, translation recency\) — no page-text matching. PICK THIS to see WHAT EXISTS by an author or in a tradition, or to enumerate a date range. Returns books with
- `get\_book`: READ PIPELINE step 1 — DISCOVER. START HERE for any named work or author. Returns the book's AI-generated summary, chapter list, edition metadata, DOI, page counts, IIIF manifest, and the cover image \(inline, so you and the user can see the book\). LANGUAGE: \`language\` is what is printed on THIS EDIT
- `get\_book\_text`: READ PIPELINE step 2 — READ. Read a book's text. Call get\_book first \(step 1\) for the chapter list, then come here. Preferred: use the chapter param to read one chapter at a time \(includes \[Page N\] markers for citation\). Alternatively, use from/to for explicit page ranges \(e.g. from=1 to=50\). When y
- `get\_quote`: READ PIPELINE step 3 — CITE. Get the exact verbatim text of a single page plus its citation apparatus. ALWAYS use before putting text in quotation marks. The response headline is citation\_link \(the stable sourcelibrary.org/q/… shortlink\) — present it to the user alongside the quote. Render as: \> \[ex
- `list\_editions`: Every edition of one work that the library holds — the other witnesses to the same text, across languages and centuries. Give it a book\_id \(easiest: the id of any edition you already found\) or a work\_id. USE THIS when a quotation needs checking against more than one witness, when you want the origin
- `check\_duplicate`: DOES THE LIBRARY HOLD THIS WORK? Call this BEFORE telling the user the library lacks a book, and before proposing one for acquisition. A miss from list\_books or search\_library is NOT evidence of absence: list\_books matches words and search\_library ranks by relevance, so a held book can sit behind do
- `get\_quotes`: READ PIPELINE step 3 — CITE, in batch. Get verbatim text + citation\_link for SEVERAL pages of a single book in one round-trip, to assemble a multi-passage dossier. Specify either pages \(an explicit array, e.g. \[12, 40, 41\]\) or an inclusive from/to range. Max 25 pages per call. Each entry carries its
- `search\_images`: Search 200,000+ historical illustrations, emblems, engravings, diagrams, AND 24,000+ artworks \(paintings, prints, sculptures\). Filter by type, subject, figure, symbol, year. Results interleave two collections: illustrations extracted from book pages \(each with a page number and book link\) and standa
- `list\_image\_facets`: List the legal values of search\_images' type, subject, figure and symbol filters, with how many images carry each. Those filters are EXACT string matches on tags an AI extractor wrote, and each vocabulary runs to thousands of strings \(e.g. "musical notes", "Jesus Christ", "medicinal plants"\), so a g
- `submit\_feedback`: Submit feedback, bug reports, or feature requests to the Source Library team. Before proposing NEW functionality, read https://sourcelibrary.org/llms.txt and https://sourcelibrary.org/developers — several past submissions proposed building things that already exist \(IIIF manifests, Content Search, D
- `share\_findings`: Share a research dossier back to the Source Library team — a title, an optional summary, and an ordered list of citations \(the passages your thesis rests on\). Each citation is a reference \{ book\_id, page, note \}, NOT copied text: the library re-renders the canonical quote from the reference, so link
- `propose\_collection`: Propose a themed collection of books to the Source Library team — a title, a rationale \(why these books belong together and what thread connects them\), and an ordered list of book ids. Get book ids from search\_library / list\_books / get\_book. Like submit\_feedback and share\_findings, this goes to the
- `start\_review\_shift`: Start a volunteer REVIEW SHIFT: the user lends their Claude \(you\) to Source Library to check one book, page by page, against its scans. Use when the user wants to help Source Library, says "start a shift" or "review pages", or asks how they can contribute. The user does NOT need to read the book's l
- `continue\_review\_shift`: Next page of the book being reviewed. Call it straight after finishing a page until the stretch the user chose is done, and again when they ask for more. Pass next.book and next.after from the previous page, and volunteer\_code. Returns the same shape as start\_review\_shift; follow how\_to\_run again. W
- `start\_blind\_check`: OPTIONAL lane, only for a user who reads the original language and asks to judge pages themselves: up to five random pages from different books, each with scan, transcription and English. Here the USER is the reviewer: ask for THEIR verdict first, before any opinion of yours, then give your reading
- `submit\_page\_review`: Record the verdict on one page of a shift. mode "book-run" \(start\_review\_shift / continue\_review\_shift\): the verdict and findings are YOURS, from reading the scan and both texts; set user\_looked true if the user checked anything on the page themselves. mode "blind" \(start\_blind\_check\): the verdict i
- `propose\_correction`: During a review shift, propose a correction to a page's transcription \(field "ocr"\) or English \(field "translation"\). A correction is a list of exact span edits: each "find" must be copied exactly from the text the shift returned and occur once on the page \(add surrounding words if it repeats\); "rep
- `get\_locus`: Turn a CANONICAL CITATION into the actual leaves that carry it. Aristotle is cited by Bekker number \(1094a8, 1447a\) and Plato by Stephanus number \(Rep. 328b\) — the references scholarship has used for centuries, which survive re-typesetting and are shareable in a way a scan page never is. USE THIS FI

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