COinS Browser Extensions for Your Library

If you've ever wondered "how can I add a reference to an article or a book on my site in a way that anybody could get to it through their own library?" we've got the spec for you. ContextObjects in Spans, or "COinS" for short, is designed to support just that. The trick is, you first need to add something to your web browser.

Below is a form for finding bookmarklets and greasemonkey scripts to support COinS links at a number of institutions. All of the data you can search for comes from the OCLC OpenURL Resolver Registry, from which OCLC has kindly provided a subset for this page as an experiment.

They work like this: on a page with one or more COinS:

Institution Name (Region/Country) Image Name Scripts
Your institution: (try at least five letters please, and "univ" for "university")
BIBSYS (Trondheim, Norway) BIBSYS X bookmarklet: [BIBSYS X]
greasemonkey: [script]
Clark University (Massachusetts, USA) CLink bookmarklet: [CLink]
greasemonkey: [script]
Galileo (Georgia, USA) Find it! bookmarklet: [Find it!]
greasemonkey: [script]
Georgia Tech (Georgia, USA) SFX@GT bookmarklet: [SFX@GT]
greasemonkey: [script]
Hamilton College (New York, USA) Find It! bookmarklet: [Find It!]
greasemonkey: [script]
Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, P.R.C) Ananda bookmarklet: [Ananda]
greasemonkey: [script]
OCLC Registry (Ohio, USA) Find in a Library bookmarklet: [Find in a Library]
greasemonkey: [script]
OhioLINK (Ohio, USA) Find a Copy in OhioLINK bookmarklet: [Find a Copy in OhioLINK]
greasemonkey: [script]
Princeton University (New Jersey, USA) Find it at PUL bookmarklet: [Find it at PUL]
greasemonkey: [script]
Simon Fraser University (British Columbia, Canada) Where can I get this? bookmarklet: [Where can I get this?]
greasemonkey: [script]
Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY, USA) SULinks bookmarklet: [SULinks]
greasemonkey: [script]
UKOLN's Open Resolver (Bath, UK) UKOLN Resolver bookmarklet: [UKOLN Resolver]
greasemonkey: [script]
University of Alberta (Alberta, Canada) Get It! bookmarklet: [Get It!]
greasemonkey: [script]
University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada) Get It! bookmarklet: [Get It!]
greasemonkey: [script]
Yale University (Connecticut, USA) Yale SFX Links bookmarklet: [Yale SFX Links]
greasemonkey: [script]

Instructions

If you're using firefox, and you can install extensions, try this (read through it before you start!):

  1. Install greasemonkey.
  2. Bookmark this page.
  3. Close and start firefox again, and come back here. You *did* bookmark this page, didn't you? :)
  4. Right click on the "greasemonkey" script link that applies to your institution (or any of them, just to try it).
  5. In the context popup menu, click "install user script" and say okay to the dialogs.

If you're not using firefox or cannot install firefox extensions, or just want to try something simpler, set up a bookmarklet instead.

  1. Choose your institution from the following list or just choose one that sounds interesting, and see the FAQ below).
  2. Click and drag the link at the right side of the row with your institution, dropping the dragged link into your web browser favorites toolbar. This should leave a bookmark with the text of the link you dragged right there in your personal bookmark/favorites toolbar.

Once you've done one of the above, go to one of the services listed at bottom (you might want to do this in another browser window or tab, to keep this page open nearby). If you installed the greasemonkey script, you should already see OpenURL links for your chosen resolver. Otherwise, click the bookmarklet you just added to your toolbar. Now you too should see OpenURL resolver buttons, which are linked to your institution's resolver as you normally see.



Service Name (Region/Country) Description Sample URLs to try
CiteULike (Manchester, ENG) "CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading." Main page ("Everyone's library")
Single article (article from Nature)
Weblogs Most contemporary weblog engines make it simple to add little hooks that format text based on simple key-value pairs. The links at right demonstrate how any weblog author could quickly add discoverable OpenURLs to their own weblog. In pyblosxom (as a plugin)
In wordpress (using a custom field)
The WAG the Dog Web Localizer (GA, USA) "The Web Localizer is an attempt to create a framework that takes web resources that are not written or intended for your use or community and rewrites them so they can work within your controlled environment. The goal is to extend the library (or any service, group, community or individual that can define its relation to other objects on the web) into the places and interfaces that people are already using (and probably are not "endorsed" or "supported" by the library)." A CiteULike record, WAGged
Hubmed (UK) An alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database. Sample record


FAQ

Umm.... so what?

This is admittedly a simple prototype. It demonstrates that:

  1. Information-rich sites do not require pre-configuration to provide OpenURL links. Instead anyone can add COinS to their stuff, and external tools can do the configuration for each user at the time of use.
  2. If that's true (hopefully we've convinced you), then it is far too much work for librarians and resource providers to do things the old way (ask them what that is).
  3. More importantly, this is so simple that anybody publishing on the net could do it.
  4. The OpenURL standard is incredibly useful, but its current implementation in most resources and services is too "heavy".

We have written a white paper with many, many pictures making this case in more detail. Please read it if you want a fuller picture of what we're getting at here. Earlier we published another paper covering some of these themes a little more broadly; it's available here.

How does it work?

Read the COinS specification.

This isn't necessarily the only way to do it, but it arguably fits within the HTML specifications as already defined.

Where can I go to discuss this or ask questions?

Please join the gcs-pcs-list and ask there. All are welcome to join.

How do I get my resolver onto the list?

Search for it here.

And, add it to this list. But before you do, please read all of the directions there.

How do I get my demonstration service onto the list?

Please join the list mentioned a few questions back and let us know about it there. We'll probably want to ask you about what you did. :)

It doesn't work on browser/os/proxy/etc. version Foo.

This is a simple prototype. Try it in firefox, as that's where we tested it, but it should work in most major browsers.

Where can I read more about...

  • The OpenURL standard is a formal specification.
  • Ross Singer (GA Tech) has a similar bookmarklet for google scholar.
  • The OpenURL Router is a large-scale resolver directory.


    • Many thanks to Brian Cassidy for shared bookmarklet wisdom, and Jeremy Dunck for shared greasemonkey gzip-bug-fix-fu.