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  freely-licensed books, historical documents, legal texts, constitutions, speeches, and other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  - Historical Documents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: [email protected]