Tome

Search books by ISBN or title across Open Library, Google Books, and OpenAlex, download their covers locally, and organize everything as plain Markdown notes — ratings, reading status, and progress included. Fully frontmatter-based, so your book library works seamlessly with Dataview, Obsidian Bases, and any other plugin that reads YAML properties.

Why I built this

I wanted a proper visual library of the books I'm reading inside Obsidian — something like the card-gallery setups you see in Notion or Readwise, but native to my vault. I tried a few existing community plugins for this first, and kept running into the same wall: broken searches, covers that never actually downloaded, or note templates that didn't play nicely with Obsidian's newer Bases feature. Nothing quite worked end-to-end the way I wanted.

So I built Tome — a plugin where the entire flow, from search to a cover you can actually see in a Bases card view, just works, is transparent about its data sources, and stores everything as portable Markdown rather than locking your library into a proprietary format.

Features

• Multi-provider search — queries Open Library, Google Books, and OpenAlex, with configurable provider order and per-provider enable/disable toggles
• Local cover caching — downloads cover images into your vault so your library works offline and stays stable even if a provider changes URLs
• Frontmatter-first — every book note stores metadata (title, authors, ISBN, publisher, subjects, status, rating, progress, and more) as YAML properties, ready for Dataview or Bases
• Built-in gallery view — browse your library as a card grid without any extra setup
• Bases-ready — point an Obsidian Base at your notes folder, switch to Cards view, and covers render automatically from the cover frontmatter property
• Customizable templates — control the exact frontmatter fields and note body layout to fit your existing vault conventions
• Rate-limit resilient — automatic retry with backoff, and an optional Google Books API key / OpenAlex contact email to raise your quota ceiling

Installation

From the Community Plugins directory

(Once published) Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search "Tome" → Install → Enable.

Manual installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. Create a folder <your-vault>/.obsidian/plugins/tome/ and place the three files inside.
3. In Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → enable Tome.

Setup

Open Settings → Tome to configure:

• Providers — enable/disable Open Library, Google Books, and OpenAlex individually.
• Google Books API key (optional but recommended) — raises your daily quota well above the shared unauthenticated limit. Get a free key from Google Cloud Console: enable the Books API under APIs & Services, then generate an API key under Credentials.
• OpenAlex contact email (optional) — puts your requests in OpenAlex's faster "polite pool" rate-limit tier. OpenAlex is primarily a scholarly/academic metadata fallback and rarely returns cover images.
• Notes folder / Covers folder — where new book notes and downloaded cover images are stored.
• Note template — the full frontmatter + body template used for every new note. Supports Templater syntax if you have that plugin installed.

Usage

1. Run Tome: Add a book from the command palette.
2. Search by title or ISBN.
3. Select a result, set your reading status and rating, and create the note.
4. Run Tome: Open library gallery to browse your collection as cards, or set up an Obsidian Base pointed at your notes folder for a fully customizable card view.

Using with Obsidian Bases

1. Create a new Base (or a new view) filtered to your book notes — e.g. tags contains "book".
2. Switch the view to Cards.
3. In Card view settings, set Image property to cover.

That's it — covers render automatically, pulled straight from the frontmatter Tome writes.

Roadmap

• Distinguish "no results found" from "provider temporarily rate-limited" in the search UI
• Additional provider support

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first for larger changes so we can discuss the approach.

License

MIT