[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Uploading Cover Images?

Tue Dec 8 15:55:30 EST 2009

Ha, ha!

Sweet - we'll check it out. 

Thanks Mike!

George

-----Original Message-----
From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org [mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of Mike Rylander
Sent: December 8, 2009 15:40
To: Evergreen Development Discussion List
Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Uploading Cover Images?

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Duimovich, George <George.Duimovich at nrcan-rncan.gc.ca> wrote:
>
> I'd very much like to see support for multi-providers too.
>
> But I still like the ability to point to local repository of cover images, since we likely wouldn't have interest in having our staff catalogue directly in OpenLibrary first. It would be easier to support local images, and then post to public site (LT or OL, etc.) eventually.  We have a tonne of government documents that nobody else has..
>
> Just today I was asked about another use scenario: we will be managing some equipment in Evergreen (audio-visual stuff, etc.) and my colleague wants to see the "cover image" of the A/V equipment in the bib record details (picture of device). Since our "Panasonic P2 170 HPX camera" etc won't be in OpenLibrary, it would be nice to have the pic show up in the cover image content area. For this particular case, we'll just link to an image via 856 field for now.
>

The changeset at http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/changeset/15105
attempts to allow local content to be served in preference to any remote added content.  If, for example, you have a single apache server (no separate added-content server) and you place an image at:

/openils/var/web/opac/extras/ac/jacket/small/0123456789

(note the lack of a filename extension!) and gave your "Panasonic P2 170 HPX camera" record that ISBN (0123456789), then you should see the image you put there as the "cover image" for the record.  After applying that changeset, and restarting apache, of course.  If anyone tests this, please let us know how it works for you!

--miker

> George Duimovich
> NRCan Library / Bibliothèque de RNCan
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org 
> [mailto:open-ils-dev-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org] On Behalf Of 
> Dan Scott
> Sent: December 7, 2009 12:31
> To: Evergreen Development Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-DEV] Uploading Cover Images?
>
> Sure... but the advantage of the OpenLibrary route is that a) the plugin already exists and b) you can get more from OpenLibrary than just covers, for free - just tables of content today, mind you, but the same principle could be used to pull the description, first sentence, etc from the OpenLibrary metadata that's returned by the call.
>
> LibraryThing offers more than just covers to Evergreen systems via 
> LibraryThing for Libraries 
> (http://www.librarything.com/forlibraries/),
> but that's a paid service.
>
> Getting back to added content, it's a bit of a painful limitation to be limited to selecting only a single service provider. I dream of the ability to stack added content services so that a library could tell their Evergreen system to check OpenLibrary, LibraryThing, Google Books, Amazon, Syndetic, SOPAC Insurge, publisher services, etc for cover images, reviews, etc, so that sites could provide the best coverage, or pick and choose services.
>
> For example: we might be happy with the covers provided by OpenLibrary, but be willing to pay Syndetic for their reviews. In the existing architecture we would have to create a custom added content Perl module to achieve that goal.
>
> There are other pieces of open source software that have already covered some of this ground - Umlaut, for example - and it might be a good thing to borrow or integrate that work, rather than continuing to roll our own. But that level of refactoring would require significant work, too, so until somebody has the time to invest, we can keep rolling with what we've got. OpenLibrary is the only service provider that I'm aware of to which libraries can contribute cover images and their own added content and that content is then freely and immediately available to others to use, which is why I lean in its direction.
>
> While I'm day-dreaming and totally on a tangent, I'd love to see somebody take advantage of the very low-hanging fruit of augmenting their catalogue records by turning the tables of contents / author notes / etc available from OpenLibrary and often from loc.gov itself into proper MARC fields to enhance keyword searching. Should be easy to do... maybe as a hackfest project, if nobody gets around to it before then.
>
> Dan
>
> On Mon, 2009-12-07 at 10:48 -0600, Josh Stompro wrote:
>> Another similar option would be to create or update entries in 
>> librarything, (http://www.librarything.com).  You could add the cover 
>> art and then use the librarything cover art service.
>> http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/08/million-free-covers-from-lib
>> r
>> arything.php
>>
>>
>> It could be that there is some crossover between librarything and 
>> openlibrary, so by adding cover art to one it shows up in the other, 
>> but I'm just speculating... looks like maybe not.
>> "*In the past, we had been talking to the Open Libary 
>> <http://openlibrary.org/> project about a joint effort. We even sent 
>> them all our covers and a key to the identifiers that linked them. 
>> But nothing came of it. To some extent that was our fault, and to 
>> some extent not. (I think them and us would differ on the blame 
>> here.) In any case, I was tired of the time and transactional 
>> friction, and wanted to try a different approach." (from page above)
>>
>> Josh
>>
>> Dan Scott wrote:
>> > On Sun, 2009-12-06 at 08:44 -0500, Ryan wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi all,
>> >> It seems we have hit a bump in using Evergreen, we have a 
>> >> collection of cook books that need to be cataloged. These cook 
>> >> books are fundraiser cook books so they are not sold by Amazon or 
>> >> cataloged by the Library of Congress. We can catalog the books 
>> >> with out a problem but can we scan the cover images and upload 
>> >> them to our Evergreen server? Where would these files have to be placed if so?
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> > You could catalog them in OpenLibrary (http://openlibrary.org/), 
>> > upload the cover images there, and use the OpenLibrary added 
>> > content plugin instead of Amazon
>> > (http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/browser/trunk/Open-ILS/src/perlmods/OpenILS/WWW/AddedContent/OpenLibrary.pm) - which didn't make it into 1.6.0.0, unfortunately, but should work as-is if you pull it directly from trunk.
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
>

--
Mike Rylander
 | VP, Research and Design
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts  | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)  | email:  miker at esilibrary.com  | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com