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 Google, followed by Syndetics.
- Records that are part of Scanned Key Content have book covers chosen by staff. These take precedence over covers provided by other sources.
- For any journals that are supported by Browzine, we use the cover images from Browzine, which are based on an ISSN match.
How to tell who is supplying the image
- It is not necessary to complete this step.
- If you would like to skip this step. start with the next section: Google Books Troubleshooting.
- You can right-click on the book cover in your browser and "Inspect Element" to see the source of the image.
- In this example, the cover comes from Google:
Google Books Troubleshooting
Use Google Direct Links (below) to see if Google associates the right metadata/cover with the identifiers in our record. HOLLIS sends multiple identifiers to Google: OCLC, ISBN, LCCN, in that order. The first one that returns an image from Google is used in the HOLLIS display.
OCLC number
- Base URL: https://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC[insert number here not including square brackets or OCLC prefix]
- Example: https://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC1021859160
- You may also need to try OCLC numbers from 035 $z
ISBN
- Base URL: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN[insert number here not including square brackets, omit hyphens]
- Example: https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9780991262519
- You may need to try multiple ISBNs
LCCN
- Base URL: https://books.google.com/books?vid=LCCN[insert number here not including prefix, spaces, or other. non-numeric characters]
- Example: https://books.google.com/books?vid=LCCN2007052328
Sample message to Google when the error is on their end
We display book covers from Google in our catalog. A user has reported an error. When we send this identifier to Google:
(insert direct link)
Google returns the wrong image and/or title.
The correct title for this work is:
Syndetics Troubleshooting
- Only ISBNs are used for cover identification
- How to report an error in a Syndetics book cover (Ex Libris Knowledge Base article)