What is IIIF?

Why is it needed?

What can it enable?

Where is it going?

And how can we use it to improve the

services we offer?

Simeon Warner, Cornell University Library

with plenty of help, and slides, from other IIIF participants, including

Michael Appleby (Yale University), Robert Sanderson (Stanford

University), Jon Stroop (Princeton University), Stuart Snydman

(Stanford University), and Benjamin Albritton (Stanford University)

IIIF – the International Image Interoperability

Framework – has the following goals:

• To give scholars an unprecedented level of uniform and rich

access to image-based resources hosted around the world.

• To define a set of common application programming interfaces

that support interoperability between image repositories.

• To develop, cultivate and document shared technologies, such

as image servers and web clients, that provide a world-class

user experience in viewing, comparing, manipulating and

annotating images.

Why is IIIF needed? A motivating

example

Otto Ege - Biblioclast

Ege slides from Ben Albritton, Stanford University Libraries

Otto Ege, Manuscript 1 - 1940

Otto Ege, MS 1 - 2014

So, how do I work with Ege MS 1 ?

What does IIIF enable?

Stanford Leaves of Ege MS 1

http://guillaumedemachaut.com/mirador/index_ege.html

Partial Reconstruction of Ege MS 1

Mirador viewer showing images from 16

institutions, each serving their own images

Facing pages at different institutions

Even when some images are missing

Detailed comparison between pages at different

institutions

Zoom to compare details

Creation of new interactive presentations

John Constable (1776-1837)

Stonehenge – Making a Masterpiece

Sketch (1820): V&A Watercolour Sketch: BM

Watercolour (1835)Victoria and Albert Museum

Watercolour Sketch: V&A

+ Letters

+ Exhibitions

+ Essays

+ Related Works

+ Bibliography

Why is IIIF needed? Take two

I am locked into my image

delivery software

I need a newer, faster image server

(and I can’t spend much time

or money on it)

I want deep zoom

(and I want it on

mobile too)

I want to allow users to visually compare

objects in the collection…

…with images of objects from

other collections

I want to make it easy for my users to cite and

share my images

and regions of those images

I want to allow embedding of my images in

blogs and web pages

I want to allow users to annotate images online

(and share, or not share, those annotations)

And I shouldn’t have to

invent any of it.

IIIF Vision

• from participating institution can be delivered in a standard way

• via compatible image server

• for display, manipulation and annotation in

application,

• to user on the Web,

• in combination of elements.

Create a global framework by which image-

based resources (images, books, maps,

scrolls, manuscripts, musical scores, etc.)

IIIF Vision, continued

• with of image-based resources

• backed by a consortium of

• supported by a rich and growing suite of

• incorporating the , and

What is IIIF?(Now that we know what is needed)

Two API’s

Software

Community

1. Two APIs

Get images via a

simple, RESTful, web

service.

Support for tiles

needed for pan-zoom

viewers.

Just enough metadata to

drive a remote viewing

experience.

(e.g. sequence, labels,

attribution, license)

Image API Presentation API

2. Compatible Software

IIP Image

IIP Moo

Viewer

digilib

FSI

Viewer

FSI Server

Wellcome PlayerMirador

Internet Archive Book

Reader

Image

Server

s

Image

Clients

Image

Apps

3. Community

National Libraries

• British Library

• France

• Denmark

• Israel

• New Zealand

• Norway

• Poland

• Serbia

• Wales

Research Institutons

•C2RMF (France)

•Cornell University

•Johns Hopkins Univ.

•Harvard University

•Oxford University

•Princeton University

•Stanford University

•Wellcome Library

•Yale University

Projects

• Biblissima

• e-codices

• TPEN

• TextGrid

Aggregators

• Artstor

• DPLA

• Europeana

Museums

• YCBA

• British Museum

Grain elevators, Caldwell, Idaho, by Lee Russell, 1941.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsac.1a34206/

Why standardize APIs?

Without shared standards we have silos

Insert standard APIs

Technology becomes interchangeable

Facilitate distributed access over standard APIs

Content becomes shareable

http(s)://{server}{/prefix}/{id}/info.json

http(s)://{server}{/prefix}/{id}/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/{quality}.{fmt}

Image API

1. Information Request

o (Just Enough) Technical Metadata

o Server Capabilities

2. Image Requests

o Get the Pixels

Enough to support single image access, pan-zoom viewers, region extraction, etc.

Image API – Image Request

Region Size Mirror Rotation Quality

Presentation API

Features

• Metadata Labels and Values

• Ordering Arrangement of Images and Other Content

• E.g. page order, arrangement of fragments

• Object Structure and Layout

• Including Links to the Image API

• Relationships to Related Resources

• Attribution and Licensing

• All described in RDF, expressed in JSON-LD

• “Annotation ready”

I’m skipping lots here, for see http://www.slideshare.net/jpstroop/iiif-specifications-overview

Jenn Riley: http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/~jenlrile/metadatamap/

Focus is the User Experience

Includes only information

necessary for an application to

present the object to the user.

Avoid creating another descriptive

metadata format…

Structure example: page order and direction

Structure example: collections, manifests

Collection

Manifest

Photo: Jeffrey Emanuel

Thanks to Harvard’s Fogg Museum and Rashmi Singhal

Not just scanned pages: Images of 3D objects

Where is IIIF going?

IIIF Roadmap

• Authorization / Authentication

o Top priority, sadly not everything can be open

o Must cope with distributed content, and graded access rather

than just binary yes/no

• Search within (text and annotations)

o Control scope to what is necessary – avoid complexities of

generalized search across collections and federated

search…

o Search only within information related to known item(s)

• Discovery of Manifest and Image Identifiers

o How can we support discovery of IIIF resources and

collections?

• Add create/update/delete functions to API (complete CRUD)

o Possibility of generic IIIF storage appliance and use of off-

the-self software

How can we use IIIF to improve the

services we offer?

IIIF at Cornell

• Three threads:

o Image access and viewers

o Book readers

o Flexible image re-use for commentary, discussion, exhibits

• Key technology ties:

o Artstor / SharedShelf will support IIIF (demo site already

available to us)

o Strong interest within Hydra community (so likely good tools

that will be easy for us to adopt) so a good path for our

Hydra-based DLXS replacements

o Spotlight technologies are closely related to our D&A and

Hydra projects

Silo IA page turner was state of the art…

Newly formed Hydra page turner IG

“Whereas a year ago one might have been forgiven for

thinking that the JavaScript Internet Archive Page Turner

was the application of choice, the emergence of the IIIF

Presentation API specification has significantly changed the

landscape. A number of presentation tools have developed,

or are developing, a version conformant with the new API

specification. Thus, if an institution's Hydra head offered an

IIIF Presentation endpoint, there would be a choice of tools

(amongst them page turners) that could be layered over the

top of it.” (Richard Green, Hull, UK)

Pointers

• IIIF website: http://iiif.io/

• IIIF showcase: http://showcase.iiif.io/

• Discussion: iiif-discuss@googlegroups.com (and archives at

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/iiif-discuss)

• IIIF code: https://github.com/iiif/