Laura,
While not directly related to your question, another route you might
want to go is to try and get thumbnail images from other sources (i.e.
amazon, openlibrary, etc.) in addition to syndetics and cache them for
future use. I do this on our website and I wrote an article on the
basics here: (http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/1009). 

I can send you the code I have on my server for our complete solution if
you want.

Here's our new books page, database driven with local thumbnails
(http://www.paulsmiths.edu/library/books.php). I also use the same data
to send out a new books email every 2 weeks to subscribers. You can sign
up here to get a sample
(http://library.paulsmiths.edu/newbooks/subscribe.php) and then
unsubscribe in your 1st email if you want. Again, if you want the Python
code that generates and sends the emails, let me know.

Also, if you're a PHP fan, VuFind has some code on downloading book
covers here:
https://vufind.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/vufind/trunk/web/bookcover.ph
p

Hope that helps in a round-a-bout way.
Be Well,

Mike Beccaria
Systems Librarian
Head of Digital Initiative
Paul Smith's College
518.327.6376
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-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Laura Harris
Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 10:07 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] New books RSS feed / "badge" with cover images?

Hi, all - I suspect something like this is being done already, so I
thought I would check in and ask. 

Essentially, what I would like to do is display the library's new books
on a web page in a graphic format - I'd like it to look very similar to
the sorts of widgets that GoodReads or LibraryThing users can create. I
threw up a few quick examples here:

http://gvsu.edu/library/zzwidget-test-171.htm 

Now, we have an RSS feed for our new books (Millennium is our ILS if it
matters), and as I understand it, the images we get from Syndetic
Solutions are parsed as enclosures to that RSS feed. Is there a way to
take the RSS feed, and only show those enclosures (if they exist, and
are not the default "grey box" we see if the book doesn't have a cover
image) somehow? 

Or perhaps there's a really easy way to do this that I'm overlooking. 

Would appreciate your insight! 

Thanks,