General information
Record identifiers such as ISBN or OCLC are sent to book cover providers, which return an image that is displayed in the Primo search results. Most covers come from one of two providers. You can right-click on an image and Inspect Element to see the source of the image.
Google Book Search
- Multiple identifiers are tested: OCLC, ISBN, LCCN, in that order.
- How to troubleshoot an incorrect Google Books cover thumbnail (Ex Libris Knowledge Base article)
Syndetics
- Only ISBNs are used for cover identification
- How to report an error in a Syndetics book cover (Ex Libris Knowledge Base article)
You can verify precisely which parameters are sent to a provider by inspecting the Network traffic in the browser's developer tools. When doing so, make sure you search by unique identifier such that you get only a single search result, otherwise your Network traffic will show image requests for all records on the search result page.
Journals via Browzine
For any journals that are supported by Browzine, we use the cover images from Browzine, which are based on an ISSN match.
Custom covers
Record that are part of Scanned Key Content have book covers chosen by staff. These take precedence over covers provided by other sources.