# Embed a Collection?

**URL:** <https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504>\
**Category:** Help\
**Created:** [June 25, 2020, 9:52am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504 "2020-06-25T09:52:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![austingoudge](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/austingoudge/32/3307_2.png) [@austingoudge](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/austingoudge)\
**Post date:** [June 25, 2020, 9:52am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/1 "2020-06-25T09:52:55Z")

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Is it possible to embed a collection (thumbnails) in a notebook, so it is automatically updated?

I would like to achieve something like this: [https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery](https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery) but instead of hard coding all the notebook references, specify a single Collection reference.

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**Author:** ![anjana](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/anjana/32/6090_2.png) [@anjana](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/anjana)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 5:04pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/2 "2020-06-26T17:04:45Z")

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Hi @austingoudge! Unfortunately no, embedding collections is not something we currently support.

However, one could build a hacky workaround using our internal API - whipped up a little example [here](https://observablehq.com/d/509ffcb470b25065). It will only work for public collections, and the API isn’t intended to be used that way so we can’t guarantee its stability - but hopefully this might be helpful for your use case.

In any case we’ll take this into account as a feature we might want to support down the line. Thanks a lot for raising the question, and let me know if you have any questions about the hacky example!

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**Author:** ![mootari](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/mootari/32/581_2.png) [@mootari](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/mootari)\
**Post date:** [June 26, 2020, 9:47pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/3 "2020-06-26T21:47:51Z")

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And if you don’t feel like theming, here are some helpers to render notebook thumbnails from an API response (or completely custom):

> **[Notebook Teasers](https://observablehq.com/@mootari/notebook-teasers)**
>
> An Observable notebook by Fabian Iwand.

(Note that they currently mimic an older Observable style.)

Edit: Applied to Anjana’s notebook the result would look like this:

 ![image](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/uploads/observablehq/original/2X/2/2c03e24de8ca9aafb1f7fd226bb6f82680879865.jpeg)

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**Author:** ![austingoudge](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/austingoudge/32/3307_2.png) [@austingoudge](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/austingoudge)\
**Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 7:47am UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/4 "2020-06-29T07:47:39Z")

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Thank you both, that’s an excellent hack. It will work very well until embedding collections is natively supported.

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**Author:** ![yuch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/6bbea6/32.png) [@yuch](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/yuch)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/5 "2021-12-02T19:26:37Z")

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Hi everyone! Is there any update to this feature request? We’d like to do the same thing…

(and also, a lot of ppl have bookmarked Austin’s workaround notebook [Gallery / D3 / Observable](https://observablehq.com/@d3/gallery))

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**Author:** ![tomlarkworthy](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/talk.observablehq.com/tomlarkworthy/32/5940_2.png) [@tomlarkworthy](https://talk.observablehq.com/u/tomlarkworthy)\
**Post date:** [December 5, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://talk.observablehq.com/t/embed-a-collection/3504/6 "2021-12-05T14:13:01Z")

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@terezaif did a live one using fetchp (and it’s awesome!)

> **[30DayChartChallenge Recap](https://observablehq.com/@terezaif/30daychartchallenge-recap)**
>
> Gallery preview of a collection, and with notebook pagination. 30DayChartChallenge Contributions to the challenge in April 2021. In order to browse through the notebooks, click on next: Getting the data This is a collection browser, for each...