COinS

What are COinS?

On March 12, 2006 OCLC added COinS to its Open WorldCat web pages. COinS is an acronym that stands for Context Objects in Spans, which represent a standardized way to embed citation metadata into a web page. COinS are actually included in the HTML code on the web page using OpenURLs. This allows other processors—such as your web browser—to find the citation metadata and generate links to other resources that are accessible via OpenURLs.

How COinS work

In order to make use of COinS, your browser has to be modified, either by adding an extension (in the case of the Firefox browser) or by adding a bookmarklet. For an example, see the image below. The circled button beneath the Bookmark|Permalink area to the right of the title is the link to the OpenURL resolver specified in the Firefox extension.

How to get COinS

If you don't have COinS set up, there are a several recommended ways to configure your browser to link to your chosen OpenURL resolver from information services that embed COinS in their web pages:

• Go to the OCLC Openly Informatics OpenURL Referrer site and download/configure the OpenURL Referrer Firefox Mozilla extension. Instructions are available on the site.
• Go to Dan Chudnov's COinS Browser Extensions for Your Library Yale Center for Medical Informatics site and install the Firefox Mozilla greasemonkey script associated with your resolver.
• Go to Dan Chudnov's COinS Browser Extensions for Your Library Yale Center for Medical Informatics site and add a bookmarklet associated with your resolver. The site says this should work for all resolvers.

For further information

OpenURL COinS: A Convention to Embed Bibliographic Metadata in HTML
The "official" COinS web site. It provides a detailed description of what COinS are and how they can be used, with links to some examples of how they are actually being used.

Introduction to COinS
Dan Chudnov's summary of what COinS are and how they can be used.

COinS Generator
Enter citation metadata for books, journal articles, patents, or dissertations, and this site will generate the COinS code.

OCLC Openly Informatics OpenURL Referrer
A Firefox browser extension called OpenURL Referrer that converts the OpenURLs in COinS to direct links to the cited resource in one of your local library's databases. This extension is provided free from OCLC's Openly Informatics division. Efforts are underway to integrate this extension with the OCLC OpenURL Resolver Registry.

COinS Browser Extensions for Your Library
Dan Chudnov's directory of resolvers complete with COinS greasemonkey scripts and bookmarklets. Dan has links available from the OCLC OpenURL Resolver Registry available for selection.