Book covers in HOLLIS - where do they come from?

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

Subject: book cover for wrong book

When we send this identifier to Google:

(insert direct link)

Google returns an image for a different book. The image Google is providing shows the book title "XXX." But the identifier (insert type and number here, e.g. OCLC 1234) is for an entirely different resource: "YYY."

Syndetics Troubleshooting

Only ISBNs are used for cover identification
How to report an error in a Syndetics book cover (Ex Libris Knowledge Base article)