I said during my thunder talk at Access a few weeks back that I hoped to give a talk on library service discovery with zeroconf and dns-sd next year. Well, um... turns out I don't quite have that long. I'll be at the NISO "Discovery to Delivery" meeting next week, and will be giving this talk:

"COinS, unAPI, and a Plan for Zero Configuration Service Discovery

The COinS (ContextObjects in Spans) specification, which builds on the OpenURL standard to integrate link resolver capability into any web resource from library portals to blogs to publisher electronic databases, has been adopted in resources like Worldcat and CiteULike, and in tools like the LibX and Zotero browser extensions. This is progress, and COinS offers a useful guide for anyone publishing OpenURL links. But what can we do to move beyond the thinly defined metadata profiles OpenURL requires, and to move beyond the stumbling block of requiring users to install something on their own? We will review recent progress from COinS to the unAPI (unapi.info) specification for object publishing, and consider how already-adopted standards from the broader computing industry (ZeroConf and DNS Service Discovery) might provide a powerful basis for improvements in service discovery and resource delivery."

I can't wait to find out what that plan looks like...