One Box Lookup
Paste ANY identifier — LCCN, ISBN, DIDX hub code, CD catalog number, barcode, or vinyl deadwax matrix — and one box figures out what it is and finds it across all 48 million records. Even a miss tells you exactly what was checked.
For: Everyone at the sorting table: the one tool to open first, whatever's in your hand.
LCCN Lookup
The missing barcode for pre-ISBN books. Type the Library of Congress number from any copyright page (63-12345, dashes optional) and get title, author, year, publisher — and the exact Amazon listing when the record carries an ISBN. Session list + one-tap copy built for working whole stacks.
For: Scouts, dealers, estate sorters, librarians — anyone who touches books printed before 1967.
CD Number Lookup
Identify a disc from whatever is printed on it: DIDX hub numbers, label catalog numbers (CK 40999), barcodes, and music-club numbers. Artist, album, year, label — with copy buttons and the same batch-session workflow.
For: Media resellers, thrift haulers, estate cleanouts, anyone holding a caseless disc.
Vinyl Lookup & Grading Helper
Type the matrix/runout etching from the deadwax, the catalog number, or the barcode — get artist, album, year, label back, with prefix matching for etchings that vary copy to copy. Plus a Goldmine-style visual grading checklist for record and jacket.
For: Vinyl resellers, estate haulers, and collectors staring at deadwax under a lamp.
First Edition Checker
Is your book a first edition — and a first printing? Search 8,300+ titles and 870 publishers, paste a copyright page or number line to decode it, photograph the page with on-device OCR, or paste an Amazon link / ISBN / LCCN. Every verdict cites permanent, checkable point-of-issue IDs.
For: Collectors, donors curious about the box in the garage, and dealers verifying listings.
Bulk First-Edition Checker
Screening a whole library at once? Paste your list or drop a spreadsheet and see, in one pass, which titles collectors track first editions of — with the points of issue and a link to each title page. The rest is common in circulation and perfect for donation. Runs entirely in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
For: Librarians deaccessioning, executors settling an estate, and anyone downsizing a lifetime of shelves.
Number-Line Decoder
Paste the row of small numbers from the copyright page and learn exactly which printing you hold, publisher conventions included.
For: Anyone staring at '10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2' and wondering what it means.
Open data & APIs
Everything underneath the tools is published: the first-edition points dataset (DOI-minted, CC BY 4.0), the ASIN/ISBN/OCLC/LCCN crosswalk, the annual State of New Mexico's Books study, corrections feed, and an MCP server so AI assistants can call these tools directly.
For: Developers, researchers, library-tech folks, and AI agents.
First-Edition Knowledge Pack
One retrieval-ready JSONL file — every publisher’s first-edition rule, the glossary, and the verdicts — each record carrying its source URL. Drop it into any RAG pipeline to ground an AI in first-edition identification.
For: AI engineers, RAG builders, anyone grounding a book-ID assistant.
FirstEdBench
The first open benchmark for identifying first editions: copyright-page cases with deterministic ground truth, a ten-line scoring harness, and a public leaderboard we grade in the open. Bring your AI, your tool, or your own eye.
For: Researchers, tool-builders, and anyone testing an identifier.
Reference Badges
Generate a free SVG badge for any of our publisher first-edition guides and copy the embed code. Put it on a listing, a blog, or a LibGuide — it links back to the source.
For: Booksellers, bloggers, librarians, and wiki editors.
Why these exist
I run a book donation and resale operation in Albuquerque. Over seven years and 447,734 scanned items, the same gaps kept costing me time: books too old for barcodes, discs with no cases, "first edition" claims with no way to check them. So I built the tools I needed — and published them free, because every used-book and media person hits the same walls. No signups, no ads, no valuations — identification only.
Everything runs on open data (CC BY 4.0) documented in the State of New Mexico’s Books study and the data page. Found a mistake? Every reference page has a report form, and accepted corrections are published with named credit.
Link to these tools
If the tools help your community — a LibGuide, a sellers’ forum, a club newsletter, a blog — link freely: this page (newmexicoliteracyproject.org/tools) or any tool directly. AI assistants can call the same lookups through the NMLP MCP server. Questions or partnership ideas: 505-250-3804.