Images of Book Covers from LibraryThing

Yet one more reason why LibraryThing is fabulous!

Libraries constantly come up against copyright issues regarding the use of book covers in their promotional materials.
Could LibraryThing have the answer?

They are offering free use of their covers to anyone with a LibraryThing Developer Key - and any member of LibraryThing can get one.

Once you have your key, you can insert a bookcover into your blog post or webpage with a simple little bit of html:

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The basics. The process, patterned after the Amazon.com cover service, is simplicity itself:

Take an ISBN, like 0545010225

Put your Developer Key and the ISBN into a URL, like so:
http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY
/medium/isbn/0545010225

Put that in an image tag, like so:
< img src="http://covers.librarything.com/devkey/KEY/medium/isbn/0545010225" >

And your website, library catalog or bookstore has a cover.

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So, what do you think about this? Are there any issues? Is this too good to be true? Can libraries legally utilise this to promote books and reading and readers advisory services guilt-free? Is anyone already using this?

The Hugos

The Hugos will be announced tomorrow. The Guardian provides a UK perspective on this.

Have you read or seen any of the nominated titles?

The Man Booker long list is also available.