Search the libraries of Berlin and Brandenburg from the command line.
Is this book in one of my libraries, is it in right now, and where is it on the shelf?
Install · Usage · For machines
A green light means a copy is on the shelf right now, red means it is out — and where the
catalogue states nothing, blibs prints ? rather than a guess. Under each hit stand the
copies of that library: where they are, their shelfmark, their status.
cargo install blibsblibs search Kafka Prozess # two words, both must occur
blibs search "Der Vorleser" --at HU,STABI,AGB # one block per library
blibs search --author Kafka --year 1953 --format book
blibs show voebb_SAK13776205 --at AGB # one title in full
blibs libraries --find grimm # which shortcode do I put in --at?An argument in shell quotes is searched as a phrase, one without it as a word. There is no
config file — "my libraries" is --at, and a shell alias makes it short:
alias bl='blibs search --at STABI,HU,AGB'All flags of search
| Flag | |
|---|---|
--title, --author, --subject, --publisher |
field searches; they combine with AND |
--year YYYY |
"was running in this year" — for a journal, a year inside its run |
--isbn NUMBER |
ISBN or ISSN, with or without hyphens; the check digit is verified |
--at LIST |
my libraries: shortcodes, ISILs or branches, comma-separated |
--limit N |
hits per library, 1–50 (default 10) |
--page N |
which page (default 1) |
--sort KEY |
relevance, year, title, author, availability |
--format TYPE |
book, ebook, journal, audio, video, … |
--language CODE |
three letters, as the records carry them: ger, eng, fre |
--available |
only titles with a copy that is in right now |
--no-availability |
don't ask whether the copies are in — faster and quieter |
--sort, --format and --language see the fetched window only; the catalogue itself can
sort and filter by neither, and the output says so rather than implying otherwise.
blibs search --help explains every one of them at length.
The id comes from the search output and carries the catalogue it belongs to. --at lists
your libraries first and, for a branch, narrows the copies to that branch.
123 institutions and 211 branches, compiled into the binary, so this one works offline:
blibs libraries lists them, --find grimm searches names and shortcodes, --branches
lists branches, --near 52.52,13.39 or --near HU orders by distance, and
blibs libraries STABI shows one in detail.
--json prints one JSON document on stdout and nothing else; errors go to stderr, also as
JSON. That is what makes blibs useful to an AI agent that has to answer "Where is
Goethe's Faust on the shelf?" — a stable schema, a notes[] array whose kind names every
limitation of an answer, and an exit code that says what happened:
| Code | |
|---|---|
| 0 | found at least one hit |
| 1 | searched and found nothing; also an unknown record id |
| 2 | usage error — nothing was sent |
| 3 | network error — DNS, TLS, connection refused, timeout |
| 4 | service unavailable — HTTP 429/503, backoff exhausted |
| 5 | the catalogue rejected the query |
| 6 | unexpected response — HTTP 200 whose content failed the plausibility check |
Fields may be added over time; renaming or removing one is a breaking change.
MIT, see LICENSE. Issues and pull requests are welcome.