Book covers can be stored in a Library Management System. This work -presented at 33rd ADLUG meeting in Piazza Armerina, oct 2014- discusses pros and cons, and how to collect book covers during cataloguing or circulation operations.

1. Pontificia Università della Santa Croce
Stefano Bargioni <bargioni@pusc.it>
Publication cover management
in a library system
33rd ADLUG Annual Meeting 2014, Piazza Armerina

2. ● ISBN based
● From supplier companies
o on a payment basis / free
o online retrieved / locally stored
● Ebsco Content Cafe, Google Books,
Amazon, Syndetics, Baker and Taylor,
OpenLibrary,…
● API, source URL
● Available in OPAC results
Book covers in ILS

3. Book covers in OPAC results
Often, thumbnails are retrieved by the web
client from a cover provider
● your server passes the source URLs or a
script that allows to compose the URLs
● very low server load
Or the ILS (like VuFind) passes the images:
● it acts as a gateway or proxy
● high server load
● the server can cache thumbnails

4. Storing images related to
bibliographic records (1)
Available sources:
● Cover providers, depending on their
licensing
● WorldCat or other big library catalogs
● Any other website
● OpenLibrary, even bulk download

5. Storing images related to
bibliographic records (2)
● A feature of your ILS
o hides complexities
● Custom solution
o you have to define some methods to retrieve
cover images from the web, store, and
include them in your ILS web pages
● An intermediate solution

6. Local cover images in Koha
● Koha >= 3.8 manages local cover images
● Koha cover images management is
evolving
● More images can be attached to each
bibliographic record
● They are stored in a SQL table, in PNG
format
● Some APIs are available

7. An intermediate solution
using Koha
We added:
● an easy way to choose and store images
● order of display:
o local cover
o remote cover
● a carousel for new acquisitions

8. Choosing a cover (1)
● A floating window
● While cataloguing or
managing circulation
● Through ISBN (more
than one can be
available)

9. Choosing a cover (2)
Automatic searches:
● Amazon
● Google Books
● WorldCat
● OpenLibrary
● GBV
The button "Associa" will
save the image under
USC

10. Choosing a cover (3)
Other methods:
● Search on Google
Images through ISBN
● Load via URL
● Upload a file
o gif, png, jpg
o less than 1 MByte
o useful for title pages of
ancient books from our
digital library

11. Applications
● OPAC enrichment
● Newsletter of new acquisitions
o about 21% more covers than from Google
Books
● Carousel in the OPAC
● A support during circulation

12. Carousel in the OPAC main
page (1)
● Updated about every two weeks
● 100-300 thumbnails

13. ● How to load lot of thumbnails?
● Browsers are able to show an image
starting from its binary representation:
<img width="16" height="16" alt="book_cover" src=
"data:image/png;base64,R0lGODlhEAAQAMQA [...] hB0SlBCBMQiB0UjIQA7" />
data:[<mime type>][;charset=<charset>][;base64],<encoded data>
Carousel in the OPAC main
page (2)

14. ● The web server can send a group of
images as a single response, structured
in JSON
o only one HTTP request
o very high performance
o very low bandwidth required
● The browser interprets the response
through a script and composes the
carousel using the thumbnails
● Books without cover are shown using a
random color (CSS3 styles)
Carousel in the OPAC main
page (3)

15. Book covers & the digital library
Covers are not available on the net for any
book:
● no ISBN
● rare or ancient
● ...
We will scan cover or title page (frontispiece)

16. Statistics
2640 thumbnails added in 7
months:
about 377 per month
Google
Books
only
With
local
covers
Incr %
142 233 27%
98 142 19%
68 88 15%
77 114 23%
87 142 25%
109 156 21%
77 119 23%
98 113 10%
105 132 13%
97 152 28%
Average 21%

17. Licensing
● Book covers available on the net are
produced by publishers and distributed
for free
● Libraries are allowed to use and share
them
● It is a non-profit use
● They are saved singly, not in bulk
● Avoid saving book covers bought by
providers, or define an agreement

18. Thank you!