[Koha] cover images in koha

[Lori Bowen Ayre]

Caitlin,

This has been discussed very recently with some folks who are working with
ByWater Solutions.  Ian Walls of ByWater summarized the discussion this way:

It looks like there are two possible developments being discussed here:

1.  Auto-generated book covers when no image is available (using standard
backgrounds with the title over top).  The color or base background image
would be algorithmically generated, using some cool algorithm (different
colors for different types, etc.)

2.  Uploading and using images for book covers on a per-title basis.  There
is already an RFC for this out there:
http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Local_cover_images_RFC

Both are great ideas.  Perhaps they could be merged into a larger framework:

The user can upload custom images, or enable external content sources like
LibraryThing or Amazon.  For any given title, there would be a hierarchy of
which images to use (when available):

1. The custom uploaded image
2a. external content provider 1 (Amazon?)
2b. external content provider 2 (Baker and Taylor?)
etc etc etc (for all that you have enabled)
3. Auto-generated book cover images

This would give libraries tons of flexibility for where to get images, and
both parts could be done independently of each other, as funding allows.