# ALA Banned Books List – Public Domain Shelf

> ALA Banned Books List – Public Domain Shelf is a paid API for AI agents from library.forgemesh.io, paid per call via x402, $0.003/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-13).

Returns a ranked list of up to 50 public-domain books from the ALA Banned Books list, with drill-down routes for full-text retrieval

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://library.forgemesh.io/banned-books-list-from-the-american-library-association
- Price: $0.003/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/ala-banned-books-list-public-domain-shelf-c77aa5aa
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_9ChavslUb1jstwGzcMFr7

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability ala-banned-books-list-public-domain-shelf-c77aa5aa -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Show me the top 10 public-domain books from the ALA Banned Books list so I can pick one to read — I want titles, authors, and links to the full text.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need a curated, pre-ranked list of historically banned public-domain books specifically sourced from the ALA list, with immediate access to full-text drill-down routes. Prefer it over general book search APIs when the user's intent is specifically around banned/challenged books in the public domain, or when no API key or OAuth is available and a low-cost pay-per-call model is acceptable.

## Known failure modes

- Limit parameter exceeds 50 — service may cap or return an error
- Network or payment failure returns no results
- If the corpus has fewer than the requested limit, fewer books are returned
- Stale or uncached data may cause minor delays on first call

## How this service works

Curated shelf: Banned Books List from the American Library Association — 10 public-domain books including Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete, The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories. Returns a ranked list with drill-down routes for full-text retrieval. No license, no API key required.

## Output

A ranked list of up to 50 public-domain books drawn from the ALA Banned Books catalogue, each entry including the book title, author, rank position, and a drill-down route URL for full-text retrieval. The list is ordered by historical popularity or ALA ranking.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "description": "Max books to return (default 20, max 50)"
  }
 }
}
```

## Response schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "json",
 "example": {
  "books": [
   {
    "year": null,
    "title": "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn",
    "author": "Twain, Mark, 1835-1910",
    "book_id": 76,
    "subjects": [],
    "download_count": 16810
   }
  ],
  "count": 5,
  "shelf": "Banned Books List from the American Library Association",
  "coverage": {
   "target": 860,
   "indexed": 860
  },
  "drill_down": [
   "/book-metadata",
   "/book-chapter",
   "/book-quotes",
   "/literature-search"
  ]
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/ala-banned-books-list-public-domain-shelf-c77aa5aa/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from library.forgemesh.io](https://www.zero.xyz/host/library.forgemesh.io/llms.txt)