MCP Databnf

mcp-databnf

data.bnf.fr is the open data service of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It publishes the authority records the national library maintains: the people it catalogues, with their dates, their places, their languages and their fields of activity; the works they wrote, with the editions each work was published in; and the links to the copies digitised in Gallica. A record states whether the library considers it established or still provisional.

This server connects a chat client to that service. You can search for an author or a work by name, read a record in full, list what an author wrote, list the editions of a work, and find the digitised copies attached to either. It needs no API key and no account.

_Version française_

Install

One-click install

Claude Code

claude mcp add databnf -- npx -y mcp-databnf

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any client using the standard config format

{

"mcpServers": { "databnf": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "mcp-databnf"] } } }

Node 24 or later is required, and no environment variable has to be set.

With Docker

{

"mcpServers": { "databnf": { "command": "docker", "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "ghcr.io/smeet666/mcp-databnf:2.2.0"] } } }

-i keeps stdin open, which is where the protocol travels, and -t is left out because a TTY rewrites the stream. The container needs outbound HTTPS to data.bnf.fr, and nothing else: no volume, no port, no credential.

Bundle, without npm

Download mcp-databnf-2.2.0.mcpb from the latest release and open it. A client that supports MCP bundles installs it on its own, with no npm and no configuration file to edit. The bundle carries its dependencies, so nothing is fetched at install time.

What you can ask

• « Que dit la BnF de Colette ? »
• "List everything Marguerite Duras wrote."
• "Which editions of that work does the library hold?"
• "Are any of them digitised in Gallica?"
• "When was that record last established?"

The ordinary path runs from a search to a record: a row carries an id, and get_author or get_work reads it.

Tools

search_authors

Finds people by name in the authority records.

In return: authors, each carrying id, which get_author, list_works and find_digitised take; name as the service writes it; label, the authority heading, usually with the dates; birth_year and death_year, null where the record states none; role; and source_url. words_searched says what was actually sent, has_more whether further pages exist, and index_window_full that the index served everything it will serve for this search.

get_author

Reads one person's record in full.

In return: the person with name, label, given_name, family_name, other_names, birth_date and death_date as published, birth_year and death_year as numbers, birth_place, death_place, biographical_information, occupation, languages as ISO 639-2 codes, countries and fields in the words of the record. A field the record leaves empty is null.

search_works

Finds works by title.

In return: works, each carrying id, which get_work, list_editions and find_digitised take; title; date, the year the record gives the work, as published; creators; status, reading established or provisional; and source_url. The envelope carries the same words_searched, has_more and index_window_full a search of people returns.

get_work

Reads one work's record in full.

In return: the work with title, label, date as published, first_year, creators as { id, name }, languages, forms, subjects and dewey_classes in the words of the record, expression_count, same_as for the registers the BnF aligns it with, and catalogue_url. status reads established or provisional, and status_statement says what the library means by it: a provisional record is one the library has not finished checking.

list_works

Lists the works one person is credited with.

In return: works, each carrying id, title, date as published, year as a number where the record has one, forms, status and source_url, with has_more to continue.

list_editions

Lists the editions of one work.

In return: editions, each carrying its own id in the BnF catalogue, the title this edition bears, date and year, publisher, place, edition_statement, extent, isbn, note as the cataloguer wrote it, catalogue_url, digitised and source_url. A field the record leaves empty is null.

find_digitised

Finds the copies digitised in Gallica attached to a person or a work.

In return: kind, saying what the catalogue types the record as, and links, each carrying the Gallica ark, its url, its rendering and the role the person holds on it. links_returned_by_role counts them per role. This server describes a digitised document and never opens one.

Established and provisional records

A record carries a status. established means the library has checked it; provisional means it has not finished, and status_statement says so in the library's own words. Report the status alongside anything taken from a provisional record.

The licence, and what it asks

The BnF states one condition on these metadata:

L'utilisation de ces métadonnées est libre et gratuite sous réserve du maintien

de la mention de leur source et de l'indication de leur date de récupération.

Use is free of charge, provided the source is named and the date of retrieval is stated. Every answer carries retrieved_at in its payload and ends its text with the source and that date. A cached answer reports the moment it was originally read, since that is when it was retrieved. Repeat both wherever what you got is shown.

Configuration

Every variable is optional. Set them in the env block of your client config.

| Variable | Default | What it d