Bring your AI to the library
Ask Claude or ChatGPT about Homer, Plato or the Gospels, and it reads the original with you, word by word.
Great Library Project has a connector: an address your AI assistant can use to open our books. With it, your assistant can show you a passage in the original language with the meaning under every word, explain what a word meant and where else it appears across the library, and find the passage you half remember. Every answer links back to the page in the reader, so you can keep reading on your own.
https://greatlibraryproject.com/mcpIn Claude
- In Claude (claude.ai or the app), open Customize → Connectors.
- Choose + Add, then Add custom connector.
- Name it Great Library Project, paste the address above, and choose Continue.
- Under Authentication, keep No sign-in (there is no account to sign in to), and choose Add.
- Ask away. The first time, Claude asks your permission to use the connector: choose Allow.
In ChatGPT
- Open Settings → Apps & Connectors, then Advanced settings, and turn on Developer mode.
- Back in Apps & Connectors, choose Create.
- Name it Great Library Project, paste the address above, set Authentication to No authentication (not OAuth), and tick that you trust the app.
- Create it, then pick it from the tools menu in a new chat.
The menus in both apps change from time to time. If you can't find a step, look for "connectors" in the app's settings.
Things to ask
Read me the first line of the Odyssey word by word.
What does πολύτροπος mean, and where else does it appear?
Show me where Socrates says the unexamined life is not worth living.
Walk me through saying 77 of the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic.
Which books in the Great Library are in Greek and complete?
What it can do, and what it won't
- Read a passage: one passage at a time, with the one before or after for context. The original, the sound of each word, its meaning and literal sense, its dictionary form, the English and our note.
- Look up a word: the dictionary entry, with its source named (LSJ, Autenrieth and others), and up to ten places the word is used across the library.
- Search: passages that match what you ask, as references with one line of English.
- List the books: what is in the library, in which language, and how complete.
It never hands over a whole chapter or book: those are for reading in the reader. It is free, needs no account, and keeps no record of who you are. Quotes are welcome with a citation and a link, as on license and citing.
For developers: it is a remote MCP server (Streamable HTTP, JSON responses, no authentication) at https://greatlibraryproject.com/mcp, with four read-only tools: list_books, get_passage, lookup_word and search. There is also a Markdown version of every passage, described in llms.txt.
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