[Koha-devel] RFC: Koha Book Cover System

[David Schuster]

This is a great idea.  I personally don't care that much about the "service"
in which my jacket comes from but the idea of being able to get a picture of
the cover if one isn't available.  We have several items that are "unique"
that we would love to have jackets of but are not part of the general trade
binding.  It is very helpful to the teachers when you say to them - "This is
what it looks like" and they say "oh the one with the purple cover!"

Of course how you obtain that jacket to store is another issue dealing with
copyright etc...  But hopefully librarians get that and do the right thing.


Reed Wade wrote:
> 
> Certainly sounds very sensible to me.
> 
> (I need to make sure folks know I have very little experience with
> Koha or libraries or library work flow. So, I'm liable to suggest
> things that wont work in practice. I just happen to work with Chris
> Cormack on a non-Koha project and thought it would be fun to help.)
> 
> So, a separate question then becomes whether there are enough
> exceptions to the amazon (or similar large image set providers) to
> make sharing exceptions worth fooling with. I'm willing to guess that
> it's not -- but could always be added later as a standard option to
> the list.
> 
> -reed
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What I have in mind would make selecting images optional. Here is a
>> thought scenario: Let's say that you prefer to use amazon images for
>> your book covers, but a few books have no cover or the wrong cover
>> from amazon. In this instance, you would be able to upload an image
>> locally, or force that bib to use a different service for it's book
>> cover.
>>
>> So, rather than requiring you to add covers to each bib by hand, you
>> could cascade through different cover options. Check for local image
>> first, if not found, use amazon.
>>
>> Does that sound like a good idea?
>>
>> Kyle
>>
>> http://www.kylehall.info
>> Information Technology
>> Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org )
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:31 PM, Reed Wade <reedwade at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Selecting and storing images locally for all holdings sounds like a
>>> pain.
>>>
>>> I can imagine a cooperatively held db (hello, koha foundation) of
>>> records that look like:
>>>
>>> isbn/issn/other globally unique id that identifies the holding in a
>>> way that makes searches possible
>>> url to images (front, back, etc) - maybe they're on flickr, or in amazon
>>> land
>>> image license and/or attribution statement
>>> caching limits
>>> who updated
>>> when updated
>>>
>>> And some simple REST style api that allowed a module to display the
>>> attribution and use the image url directly for display or via a
>>> (potentially caching) proxy for local library networks that might
>>> require it.
>>>
>>> And a mechanism for adding/updating records to the cooperatively held
>>> db. And for automatically using them maybe based on who updated them
>>> in case some folks turn out to be bad at it.
>>>
>>> A variation -- instead the central db providing the look up service.
>>> It could provide just the collective DB with your local koha instance
>>> subscribing to updates. So, the user load of the lookup is local but
>>> we get the benefit of sharing the effort of selecting images.
>>> (Reinvention of usenet data flow architecture sort of.)
>>>
>>> -reed
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 5:24 AM, Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Excellent ideas all around. I suppose it could be written as a CPAN
>>>> module which would then be used in Koha.
>>>>
>>>> Kyle
>>>>
>>>> http://www.kylehall.info
>>>> Information Technology
>>>> Crawford County Federated Library System ( http://www.ccfls.org )
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 1:05 PM, Galen Charlton <gmcharlt at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:04 PM, Kyle Hall <kyle.m.hall at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> This new Covers module would be the sole interface for Koha for all
>>>>>> cover systems ( Amazon, LibraryThing, Syndetics, etc. ) and would act
>>>>>> as an interface between Koha and the book cover modules.
>>>>>
>>>>> Good idea.  It occurs to me that this could be *very* loosely coupled
>>>>> to Koha and done as a component that could be used by other
>>>>> applications, as all that it would need from Koha itself are some
>>>>> configuration settings and some information from each bib record to
>>>>> grab covers for.
>>>>>
>>>>> Regards,
>>>>>
>>>>> Galen
>>>>> --
>>>>> Galen Charlton
>>>>> gmcharlt at gmail.com
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> http://lists.koha.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
>>>>
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>>>
>>
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