---
license: cc0-1.0
task_categories:
- text-generation
language:
- en
tags:
- ocr
- books
- public domain
pretty_name: Library of Congress Public Domain Books
size_categories:
- 1B<n<10B
---
# Library of Congress Public Domain Books (English)

This dataset contains more than 140,000 English books (~ 8 billion words) digitised by the Library of Congress (LoC) that are in the public domain in the United States. The dataset was compiled by [Sebastian Majstorovic](https://www.storytracer.org).

## Curation method

The dataset was curated using the [LoC JSON API](https://www.loc.gov/apis/json-and-yaml/) and filtering the Selected Digitized Books collection for English books.

## Dataset summary

The dataset contains 140,000 OCR texts (~ 29 million pages) from the [Selected Digitized Books Collection](https://www.loc.gov/collections/selected-digitized-books/about-this-collection/) of the Library of Congress.

## Size

The size of the full uncompressed dataset is ~47GB and the compressed Parquet files are 26GB in total. Each of the parquet files contains a maximum of 1000 books.

## Metadata

The book texts are accompanied by basic metadata fields such as title, author and publication year (see [Data Fields](#data-fields)).

## Languages

Every book in this dataset has been classified as having English as its primary language by the LoC.

## OCR

The OCR for the books was produced by the Library of Congress.

## Data fields

| Field | Data Type | Description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| lccn | string | The Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) which is also the id in the item URL (https://www.loc.gov/item/{lccn}) |
| title | string | LoC metadata field for book title |
| author | string | LoC metadadata field for author  |
| year | int | LoC metadata field for publication year |
| page_count | int | LoC metadata field for page count |
| filename | string | Name of the LoC plain full text OCR file |
| text | string | Content of the LoC plain full text OCR file |

## Copyright & License
The full texts of the LoC Selected Digitized Books Collection are in the public domain in the United States. The [LoC rights statement](https://www.loc.gov/collections/selected-digitized-books/about-this-collection/rights-and-access/) for the collection states: "The books in this collection are in the public domain and are free to use and reuse." It is the responsibility of the dataset user to comply with the copyright laws in their respective jurisdiction. The dataset itself, excluding the full texts, is licensed under the [CC0 license](https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/).