Re: Laundry list for NGC (long post) -- How does Koha measure up?

If the library world is looking for a simple open-source project,
setting up a big cover database would be tops on my list.

Amazon, Syndetics and so forth don't "own" the covers they provide.
They just did the work of getting them—99% from publishers—and since
they provide them, they can put them under a license if they want.*

All someone needs to do is set up a website, accept covers that come
in and particularly, make it easy to get feeds from publishers.
Publishers are eager to help. LibraryThing, for example, was granted
access to covers of all the Random House and much of Harper Collins,
without going to much trouble over it. Publishers want their data out
there, and are indeed annoyed that others resell what they made.

Anyone interested in doing this? Anyone interested in doing it with
LibraryThing? You provide the programming, we'll give it servers and
bandwidth...

Tim

*Amazon serves the files even if you've never agreed to anything, but
we'll leave that off. In my understanding, covers retain their
original (publisher) copyright but displaying them as a product shot
is always legal. (Taking the cover out of context and using it to make
some other work of art would not be.)

On 12/12/06, Chris Cormack <chris <at> bigballofwax.co.nz> wrote:
>
>
> On 12/13/06, Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind <at> jhu.edu> wrote:
> > Somehow Koha seems to be using their data without linking back to them,
> > which I don't understand how they can get away with that either. Maybe
> > they are linking back to them, just so subtly I'm not noticing or
> > something.
>
>
> The book cover links back.
>
> Chris
>
>
>