Language / Help with understanding how verb governance is notated in Janecki's 301 Polish Verbs [5]

I have this book and I don't think that it's so straightforward to determine which case a verb takes from this kind of notation.

Whilst lubić will always take the accusative, the situation of chcieć is more complicated and depends on the type of noun being wanted - this isn't covered in the book. See a discussion here:

forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2123856

Likewise, it's not immediately obvious from the entry on podobać się that the 'liker' is in the dative and the 'liked' is in the nominative.

I'd only use this book in conjunction with a good dictionary which provides more detailed examples of usage.

Language / Help with understanding how verb governance is notated in Janecki's 301 Polish Verbs [5]

I haven't come across the dictionary you mentioned - but of the three that I own, I find the Collins Polish-English dictionary to be the best, particularly for giving examples and solving problems like the one in your original post.

I also have the Collins dictionary as an iPhone app, and I'd recommend that as it hasn't lost a lot from the book edition.