Presentation on IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework, <http: />) for the Cornell University Library, Visual Resources Working Group

1. 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)

2. 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.

3. Why is IIIF needed? A motivating
example

4. Otto Ege - Biblioclast
Ege slides from Ben Albritton, Stanford University Libraries

5. Otto Ege, Manuscript 1 - 1940

6. Otto Ege, MS 1 - 2014

7. So, how do I work with Ege MS 1 ?

8. What does IIIF enable?

9. Stanford Leaves of Ege MS 1
http://guillaumedemachaut.com/mirador/index_ege.html

10. Partial Reconstruction of Ege MS 1
Mirador viewer showing images from 16
institutions, each serving their own images

11. Facing pages at different institutions

12. Even when some images are missing

13. Detailed comparison between pages at different
institutions

14. Zoom to compare details

15. Creation of new interactive presentations

16. 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

17. Why is IIIF needed? Take two

18. I am locked into my image
delivery software

19. I need a newer, faster image server
(and I can’t spend much time
or money on it)

20. I want deep zoom
(and I want it on
mobile too)

21. I want to allow users to visually compare
objects in the collection…

22. …with images of objects from
other collections

23. I want to make it easy for my users to cite and
share my images
and regions of those images

24. I want to allow embedding of my images in
blogs and web pages

25. I want to allow users to annotate images online
(and share, or not share, those annotations)

26. And I shouldn’t have to
invent any of it.

27. 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.)

28. IIIF Vision, continued
• with of image-based resources
• backed by a consortium of
• supported by a rich and growing suite of
• incorporating the
, and

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

30. Two API’s
Software
Community

31. 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

32. 2. Compatible Software
IIP Image
IIP Moo
Viewer
digilib
FSI
Viewer
FSI Server
Wellcome Player Mirador
Internet
Archive Book
Reader
Image
Server
s
Image
Clients
Image
Apps

33. 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

34. Grain elevators, Caldwell, Idaho, by Lee Russell, 1941.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsac.1a34206/

35. Why standardize APIs?
Without shared standards we have silos

36. Insert standard APIs
Technology becomes interchangeable

37. Facilitate distributed access over standard APIs
Content becomes shareable

38. 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.

39. Image API – Image Request
Region Size Mirror Rotation Quality

40. 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

41. 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…

42. Structure example: page order and direction

43. Structure example: collections, manifests
Collection
Manifest

44. Photo: Jeffrey Emanuel
Thanks to Harvard’s Fogg Museum and Rashmi Singhal
Not just scanned pages: Images of 3D objects

45. Where is IIIF going?

46. 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

47. How can we use IIIF to improve the
services we offer?

48. 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

49. Silo IA page turner was state of the art…

50. 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)

51. 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/