Source Library

A digital library of historical primary sources with AI-aided OCR, translation, and scholarly curation.

🌐 Visit Library • 📖 Docs • 🗺️ System Map • 🤝 Contribute

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🎬 Experience Source Library

Explore thousands of digitized historical texts with AI-enhanced translations and scholarly curation.

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🎯 About Source Library

Source Library is an open digital library dedicated to making early printed books and primary sources readable and citable. We specialize in alchemy, Hermetica, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, and early modern science—texts that bridge historical scholarship with contemporary exploration.

🌟 Why Source Library?

• ✨ Originals First — Read the original language text with AI-enhanced translations alongside
• 🎓 Citable Scholarship — Every book gets a DOI and scholarly metadata (USTC alignment, edition tracking)
• 🏛️ Partner Subdomains — Institutions like the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica curate reading rooms on their own domains
• 🔍 Discovery — Collections, galleries of illustrations, and semantic search surface overlooked texts
• ✅ Rigorous QA — Manual verification, image quality scoring, and OCR validation before publication

The platform ingests ~15K pages monthly from Internet Archive, Gallica, Bodleian, Wellcome, and other digital heritage partners.

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🚀 Quick Start

💻 Development Environment

# 🍴 Clone and install
git clone https://github.com/Embassy-of-the-Free-Mind/sourcelibrary-v2.git
cd sourcelibrary-v2
npm install

# ⚙️ Configure environment (see .env.example for required variables)
# Must include: MongoDB Atlas connection, Google Gemini API key, Vercel Blob token

# ▶️ Start dev server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000

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📋 Tech Stack

📦 Key Dependencies:

• sharp — Image resizing and cropping
• @google/generative-ai — Gemini API integration
• xml2js — USTC metadata parsing
• @modelcontextprotocol/sdk — MCP server for agent integration
• stripe — Donation and subscription handling

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📚 Core Features

📖 Reading & Navigation

• ⚡ Page pagination — Instant navigation between 100+ pages
• 🔍 Full-text search — Query across OCR'd text and translations
• 📌 Quote generation — Copy and cite passages with DOI links

🔄 Processing Pipeline

• 🧩 Smart split detection — Automatic gutter detection for two-page spreads (Gemini AI or ML-based)
• ✍️ High-accuracy OCR — Gemini Vision API with language-specific models (Latin, German, Greek, Arabic, etc.)
• 🗣️ Context-aware translation — Maintains continuity across pages for scholarly accuracy
• 🖼️ Gallery extraction — AI-powered detection and cataloging of illustrations

🎨 Curation & Discovery

• 📑 Themed collections — Editorial collections (e.g., "Alchemy & Transmutation," "Kabbalah & Mysticism")
• 🏛️ Gallery browsing — Curated images from all books (museum-quality metadata)
• 📚 Related editions — Link across translations, reprints, and derivative works
• 🔗 Authority linking — Connect to USTC, VIAF, and other scholarly databases

📤 Scholarly Export

• 📱 EPUB generation — Multi-format ebook export
• 📄 PDF with annotations — Preserve layout, add scholarly notes
• 🆔 DOI minting — Version books via Zenodo integration for long-term citation

🏢 Tenant Subdomains

• 🏛️ Isolated reading rooms — Partners host curated subsets on custom domains (e.g., bph.sourcelibrary.org)
• 🎨 Branding & navigation — Full UI customization per tenant
• 🔒 Access control — Public or members-only collections

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🏗️ Architecture Overview

📊 Data Model

📚 Books contain structured metadata:

• 🏛️ Bibliographic — Title, author, language, publication date, USTC ID
• 🖼️ Images — Links to source (Internet Archive, Gallica, etc.), archival status
• ⚙️ Processing — OCR status, translation language, extraction metadata
• 🎨 Curation — Collections, tier (featured/standard), visibility flags

📄 Pages store individual page data:

• 📸 Original image — Source photo or PDF page
• ✂️ Split coordinates — Crop boundaries (0-1000 scale) for two-page spreads
• ✍️ OCR output — Raw Gemini extraction + language metadata
• 🗣️ Translation — English translation with scholarly notes
• 🖼️ Illustrations — Detected images with quality scores and descriptions

🖼️ Gallery images are extracted illustrations:

• 🏷️ Metadata — Subject, figures, symbols, style, techniques, period
• ⭐ Quality score — 0–1.0 rating (filters below 0.5)
• 🔗 Provenance — Source book and page, linked back

🎨 Image Tier System

All page images are resized on-demand via /api/image:

Tier	Dimensions	Quality	📱 Use Case
Thumbnail	400px wide	70% JPEG	Grids, navigation, social sharing
Display	1200px wide	80% JPEG	Main reading view, comfortable for annotation
Full	2400px wide	90% JPEG	Magnifier, fullscreen detail, printing

Split pages are cropped non-destructively via coordinates; original images are always preserved.

🔄 Processing Pipeline

📥 Import → ✂️ Split Detection → ✍️ OCR → 🗣️ Translation → 🎨 Enrichment → 🌍 Publishing

1. 📥 Import — Upload images, import from IA/Gallica via IIIF, or paste URLs
2. ✂️ Split Detection — Detect two-page spreads; mark crop boundaries
3. ✍️ OCR — Gemini Vision extracts text per page language
4. 🗣️ Translation — Gemini translates to English with prior-page context for continuity
5. 🎨 Enrichment — Extract illustrations, generate summaries, assign collections
6. 🌍 Publishing — Set visible: true, mint DOI, push to search index

Batch endpoints process up to 5 pages/request using Gemini Batch API (50% cheaper).

🔌 API Routes (Key)

Base URL: https://sourcelibrary.org (production) or http://localhost:3000 (local dev with .env.local configured).

Common 404 mistake: paths like /api/bph/books or /api/bph/books/[id] do not exist. BPH catalogue APIs live under /api/embed/bph/.... There is also no top-level /api/[tenant]/books route — tenant book listings use /api/books/library or the embed routes below.

Public read APIs (no auth required today)

Endpoint	Method	Purpose
/api/search?q=<query>	GET	Full-text search across books and page translations
/api/books?limit=100&offset=0	GET	Simple book list (global catalogue; visible: true, indexed only)
/api/books/library?limit=100&skip=0	GET	Rich browse API — search, sort, filters, collections
/api/books/[id]	GET	Book metadata (accepts Mongo id or slug)
/api/books/[id]/quote?page=<n>	GET	Citable quote + formatted citations (inline, footnote, BibTeX, DOI)
/api/gallery?limit=24	GET	Illustration / artwork search
/api/image?url=<encoded-url>&w=400	GET	On-demand image resize & crop
/api/embed/bph/books?limit=24	GET	BPH catalogue (paginated, searchable)
/api/embed/bph/books/[slug]	GET	Single BPH book detail
/api/embed/bph/featured	GET	Featured BPH books
/api/embed/bph/collections	GET	BPH collection list
/api/embed/bph/languages	GET	BPH language facets
/api/embed/bph/suggest?q=alch	GET	BPH search autocomplete
/api/embed/bph/stats	GET	BPH catalogue stats

Tenant-scoped listing (not /api/bph/...)

Use one of these patterns to filter by partner tenant (e.g. BPH):

Approach	Example
Embed prefix (recommended for BPH)	GET /api/embed/bph/books?limit=24
Library API + query param	GET /api/books/library?tenant_slug=bph&limit=24
Host header (subdomain)	Call https://bph.sourcelibrary.org/api/books/library?limit=24 — the proxy injects tenant context
Manual header (advanced)	curl -H "x-tenant-slug: bph" https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books/library?limit=24

The /api/[tenant]/books/[id]/... paths that exist in the codebase are editor/processing routes (batch OCR, index rebuild, etc.) — not public catalogue listings.

Authenticated / internal APIs

These require a signed-in session cookie, editor role, or (for some dataset endpoints) a Bearer API key. Calling them without auth returns 401 or 403.

Endpoint	Method	Purpose
/api/books	POST	Create a new book (editor)
/api/books/[id]	PATCH	Update book metadata (curator+)
/api/books/[id]/batch-ocr-async	POST	Queue batch OCR job
/api/books/[id]/batch-translate-async	POST	Queue batch translation job
/api/pages/[id]	PATCH	Update page OCR/translation
/api/jobs/[id]/process	POST	Async job processor (Lambda)

Full narrative API walkthrough: docs/blog-source-library-api.md. MCP tools (search, quote, read): mcp-server/README.md.

🧪 Trying the API (curl, Postman, browser)

All examples below hit production and need no API key. Replace the base URL with http://localhost:3000 when running locally (MongoDB + env vars required).

curl

# Search translated text
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/search?q=quintessence&limit=5" | jq .

# List books (global catalogue)
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books?limit=5" | jq .

# Browse with filters and sort
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books/library?limit=5&sort=recent-translation&has_translation=true" | jq .

# BPH catalogue — note /api/embed/bph/, NOT /api/bph/
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/embed/bph/books?limit=5&translated=true" | jq .

# BPH via tenant_slug on the library endpoint
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books/library?tenant_slug=bph&limit=5" | jq .

# Book metadata (id or slug)
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books/know-thyself-reger-von-ehrenhart" | jq .

# Citable quote for a page
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/books/6836f8ee811c8ab472a49e36/quote?page=57" | jq .

# Gallery search
curl -s "https://sourcelibrary.org/api/gallery?subject=alchemy&limit=5" | jq .

Pretty-printing with jq is optional; omit | jq . to see raw JSON.

Postman

1. Create a new GET request.
2. Set URL to e.g. https://sourcelibrary.org/api/embed/bph/books
3. On the Params tab add query keys: limit = 24, sort = title, translated = true
4. Leave Auth as No Auth for the public endpoints above.
5. Send — expect 200 with JSON body.

Browser

Public GET endpoints can be opened directly:

• Search: quintessence
• BPH books
• Global library browse

📁 Directory Structure

src/
├── app/                         # 🎨 Next.js App Router
│   ├── book/[id]/               # 📖 Book detail, reading, processing
│   │   ├── page.tsx             # Main book hub
│   │   ├── split/page.tsx       # Split detection workflow
│   │   └── page/[pageId]/page.tsx      # Individual page view
│   ├── api/                     # 🔌 All API routes
│   │   ├── books/               # Book CRUD & batch ops
│   │   ├── pages/               # Page processing
│   │   ├── image/               # Image proxy & cropping
│   │   ├── jobs/                # Async job tracking
│   │   └── search/              # Full-text & semantic
│   ├── [tenant]/                # 🏢 Tenant subdomain routes
│   ├── gallery/                 # 🖼️ Illustration browsing
│   ├── collections/             # 📑 Collection pages
│   └── admin/                   # ⚙️ Admin dashboard
├── hooks/                       # 🎣 Reusable React hooks
└── lib/                         # 🛠️ Business logic & utilities
    ├── mongodb.ts               # Database operations
    ├── image-extraction.ts      # Illustration detection
    └── auth-helpers.ts          # Authentication utilities

scripts/
├── workers/                     # ⚙️ Lambda worker functions
│   ├── pipeline-orchestrator.mjs # Main processing pipeline
│   ├── image-extract-worker.mjs # Gallery extraction
│   └── ...
├── maintenance/                 # 🔧 One-off maintenance scripts
├── migrations/                  # 📊 Database schema updates
└── audit-bph-leaks.mjs          # 🔒 Tenant security verification

tests/
├── unit/                        # ✔️ Vitest unit tests
└── integration/                 # 🔗 Integration tests

prompts/                        # 🤖 AI system prompts
├── ocr/
├── translation/
├── split-detection/
└── ...

.claude/                        # 🧠 AI agent context
├── docs/                       # 📚 Detailed architecture docs
├── skills/                     # 🎯 Specialized agent skills
└── handoffs/                   # 📋 Incident reports & lessons

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🔄 Common Workflows

📥 Importing Books from Internet Archive

// From the UI or via API
POST /api/books
{
  "ia_id": "thehermetic00fludd",
  "title": "The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings",
  "author": "Arthur Edward Waite",
  "language": "en",
  "ustc_id": "123456"
}

The system:

1. 📥 Fetches page images from IA IIIF
2. ✂️ Detects splits and generates crop coordinates
3. 📤 Queues for OCR and translation
4. 🌍 Publishes when processing completes

✂️ Processing a Split Book

1. 🖥️ Visit /book/[id]/split
2. 🖱️ Adjust split line visually (drag or Gemini AI auto-detection)
3. ✅ Click "Apply Split" — creates two virtual pages with crop coordinates
4. 📸 Original images preserved; OCR runs on cropped versions

✍️ Batch OCR with Gemini Batch API

POST /api/books/[id]/batch-ocr-async
{
  "page_ids": ["page-1", "page-2", "page-3"],
  "language": "la"
}

Returns a job ID; Gemini processes offline, saves results when complete. 50% cheaper than standard API.

🎓 Generating a Scholarly Edition

POST /api/books/[id]/editions
{
  "title": "The Emerald Tablet: First Complete English Translation",
  "translator": "Jane Doe",
  "language": "en",
  "format": "epub"
}

System generates:

• 📝 Scholarly front matter (introduction, translator bio, etc.)
• 📱 EPUB with TOC and metadata
• 🆔 DOI via Zenodo integration
• 📚 Citation metadata (BibTeX, RIS)

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🧪 Testing

🚀 Run Tests

# Unit tests
npm run test:unit

# Integration tests
npm run test:integration

# End-to-end tests (Playwright)
npm run test:e2e

# Coverage report
npm run test:coverage

# Watch mode
npm run test:watch

✅ E2E Test Examples

• 📥 Book import — Validate IA ingestion pipeline
• ✂️ Split detection — Verify gutter detection accuracy
• 🌐 Translation — Confirm source/translation alignment
• 🔒 Tenant subdomain — Ensure content isolation (no leaks)
• 🔍 Search — Test full-text and semantic indexing

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🚀 Deployment

🔄 Staging (Preview)

Every pushed branch auto-deploys to Vercel preview:

git push origin feat/my-feature
# ↓ Vercel builds and deploys
# ↓ Preview URL in GitHub PR

🌍 Production

Merge to main via PR → automatic Vercel deploy to sourcelibrary.org

✅ Pre-deployment checklist:

• Tests pass (npm run test)
• TypeScript check passes (npx tsc --noEmit)
• No hardcoded secrets or credentials
• Tenant subdomain leak audit passes (node scripts/audit-bph-leaks.mjs)
• PR reviewed and approved

🔑 Environment Variables

Required (.env.local):

MONGODB_URI=mongodb+srv://...
NEXTAUTH_SECRET=<random-secret>
GOOGLE_API_KEY=<gemini-key>
VERCEL_BLOB_TOKEN=<vercel-blob-token>
AWS_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

Optional:

STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=<for-donations>
ZENODO_TOKEN=<for-doi-minting>
SUPABASE_URL=<for-embeddings>

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📖 Documentation

• 🗺️ System Map — Comprehensive architecture diagram and file index
• 🏗️ ARCHITECTURE.md — Data model, workflows, and design decisions
• 🤖 AGENTS.md — Technical context for AI agents and automated workers
• 📋 CLAUDE.md — Development workflow, PR conventions, critical invariants
• 🔐 AUTH_IMPLEMENTATION.md — NextAuth setup and tenant auth
• 📦 Batch OCR Workflow — Using Gemini Batch API
• 🔌 API Documentation — REST API reference
• 🖼️ Image Processing — How cropping and resizing works

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🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Start with CONTRIBUTING.md — setup, the branch/PR workflow, how deploys work (and the Vercel setup you should NOT do), and the data-safety rules. Deeper doctrine lives in the development workflow. The short version:

1. 🌿 Create a feature branch (off main):

   # Using git worktree for multi-session safety
   git worktree add .claude/worktrees/feat-xyz feat/xyz
   cd .claude/worktrees/feat-xyz
   

2. ✏️ Make changes and test:

   npm run lint
   npm run test
   npm run test:e2e
   

3. 📤 Push and create a PR:

   git push origin feat/xyz
   gh pr create --base main
   

4. 📋 PR guidelines:

   • One concern per PR — Don't bundle refactors with features
   • Verify deletions — Always grep -rn before deleting code
   • Run type check — npx tsc --noEmit before submitting
   • Describe scope — State what's in scope AND out of scope

🎯 What We're Looking For

• 🐛 Bug fixes with test coverage
• ✨ Feature implementations aligned with project mission
• ⚡ Performance improvements with benchmarks
• 📝 Documentation improvements
• ♿ UX/accessibility enhancements
• 🏢 Tenant integration examples

📢 Reporting Issues

• 🐛 Bugs — Include reproduction steps, expected vs. actual behavior
• 💡 Feature requests — Explain the use case and user impact
• ❓ Questions — Open an issue

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🛡️ Security & Data Protection

• 🚫 No deletion without approval — All book/page deletions require explicit confirmation
• 🔒 Tenant isolation — Tenant subdomains are closed systems (no cross-tenant leaks)
• 🔐 Secret management — All secrets via environment variables, never hardcoded
• ⚖️ AGPL licensing — Contributions must respect AGPL-3.0-or-later

See CLAUDE.md Security for detailed security policies.

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📊 Current Status

As of July 2026 — these move weekly; live numbers at sourcelibrary.org/data.

📈 Active Corpus:

• 📚 ~29K books with visible: true
• ✅ ~15K fully processed (OCR'd and translated)
• 🌍 ~14K with full English translations
• 🖼️ 200K+ catalogued illustrations in the gallery

⚙️ Processing Capacity:

• 📥 15K+ pages/month ingestion
• 🗣️ Multi-language support (Latin, German, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit, Chinese, etc.)
• 💰 Batch API for 50% cost reduction

🏢 Platform Tenants:

• 🔮 Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica — Hermetica & esoterica
• ⚗️ Kloss Collection — Medical alchemy
• 🤝 Additional partners in development

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📝 License

Source Library is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later). All contributions must respect this license.

See LICENSING.md for details on third-party licenses and attribution.

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📞 Support & Community

• 🐛 Found a bug? Open an issue
• 🤝 Want to collaborate? Contribute
• 🌐 Visit the site — sourcelibrary.org

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📖 Digitizing history. Making primary sources readable. Building open scholarship.

↑ Back to top

src/
├── app/              # All routes, pages, and API endpoints
│   ├── api/          # API routes
│   ├── book/         # Book pages (detail, read, pipeline)
│   └── page.tsx      # Homepage
├── components/       # Reusable React components
├── hooks/            # Reusable React hooks for component logic
└── lib/              # Business Logic, Utilities (mongodb, ai, types), and Services