Journal cover images - in SFX Link Resolver

I been learning SFX administration - adding some features here and there... last week I added the Google Books covers service - which turned out to be quite satisfactory.  It got me thinking that there must be a similar service for journal covers.  Apparently not.

However, some colleagues in the Twitterverse recommended using the journal covers supplied by Elsivier.  It's not an API call, nor am I able to directly call the images remotely - but I have some space - so I decided to download and link them locally.

All the files are named XXXXXXXX.gif - where XXXXXXXX is the ISSN of the journal.  (I've since renamed the files to XXXX-XXXX.gif to support the way that SFX deals with ISBN's).  After downloading and untarring the image files, I placed them in a web-accessible directory.

Then, it was simply a matter of linking, unobtrusively, to the images in SFX (or presumably from any application that deals with ISSN's).  For SFX, I inserted the following - but this code would work for any page as long as you can insert the desired ISSN in the appropriate places:

<!-- SKA EXPERIMENTAL - Adding journal cover images -->
<!-- Will show image if available, or will show 0 height 1px image otherwise -->
<!-- Note:  Without Javascript in IE, will show no-image icon if image does not exist -->
   <TMPL_IF ISSN>
        <a href="http://lab.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/anthonys/journalcover/<TMPL_VAR NAME="ISSN" ESCAPE='HTML'>.gif">
          <img src="http://myserver.mydomain.ca/journalcovers/<TMPL_VAR NAME="ISSN" ESCAPE='HTML'>.gif" height=90 alt="" onerror="this.src='http://myserver.mydomain.ca/journalcovers/px.gif'; this.height='0';">
        </a>
    </TMPL_IF>
<!-- END SKA EXPERIMENTAL -->

In my case, I inserted this code in sfxmenu.tmpl, just after the area where the Google Books cover would load.  The <TMPL_IF ISSN> prevents this portion from being rendered if the item in question does not have an identified ISSN (for example - if it were a book, or other work).

One could certainly that the portions - removing the <TMPL> portions that are specific to SFX, and insert this code anywhere.  In most cases, if the ISSN image is not available, it will display px.gif (which is a 1 pixel white image).  In Firefox it's totally transparent - but in IE, it will show a broken image if the ISSN image is not found - and the user has disabled JavaScript.  I hope to resolve that problem eventually.

Some examples:

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3 (No cover available)

Comments

[Markin Ambuh]

Reading and trying to understand this really give me head ache. So complicated.