[Koha] cover images

[Michael Kuhn]

Hi Lisa

 > I am in the process of preparing to migrate one library catalogue
 > (non-koha) into another (koha) and have a question regarding cover
 > images.
 >
 > One location/library is using Google Images for their cover images

Since Google Images is an image search I guess you're talking about 
pictures from Google Books. However it is not possible to automatically 
show any pictures from Google Images in Koha. But it is possible to show 
pictures from Google Books by activating system preference "GoogleJackets".

 > but the new one would like to add their own to any records where an
 > image is not available from Google. Is it possible to do this? So for
 > example, koha would initially look for a local cover image and if
 > there is not one available pull the one from Google Images.

Unfortunately at the moment it is not possible to show pcitures the way 
as you described it. If you activate Koha system preferences 
"GoogleJackets" (for pictures from Google Books) and "LocalCoverImages" 
(to upload and show your own pictures) then it will always search and 
display pictures from both sources - and this means it will show TWO 
pictures if each source has one pictures available.

There is a bug about this issue but it isn't solved yet.

* https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=7187
* https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=7574 (marked 
as a duplicate)

Also be aware that even if no picture is found it will show a standard 
picture saying "no cover image available" in the Koha staff client and 
in the Koha OPASC. However, in the Koha OPAC this can be suppressed 
using the following code in system preference "OPACUserCSS":

span.no-image {
   display: none;
}

See:

* https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=5761

 > They also
 > have some issues regarding some of the Google images which are not a
 > consistent size (some seem to come out as small thumb nails rather
 > than the ‘regular’ size but I don’t know if there is something in koha
 > to standardise this.

No, this is not possible at the moment. But it seems Koha is resizing 
the pictures itself in some way - I assume this because the pictures 
shown in the search results pages are usually smaller than the ones 
shown in item detail page.

A similar question was asked here in 2016 but it didn't get no response.

* https://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/2016-January/044635.html

Hope this helps.

Best wishes: Michael
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