DH tools for working with IIIF enabled collections

Abstract

DH tools for working with IIIF enabled collections workshop will introduce participants to the gamut of IIIF enabled tools that can work with the diverse set of collections that implement IIIF. The workshop will be hands-on with participants using either their own images or public collections they are interested in.

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a set of open standards for delivering high-quality, attributed digital objects online at scale. It’s also an international community developing and implementing the IIIF APIs. IIIF is backed by a consortium of leading cultural institutions and a global and engaged community.

IIIF enables digital object portability across viewers and tools. It allows uniting of disparate material such as the reunification of manuscripts and parts of manuscripts across institutional boundaries. This portability is one of the reasons IIIF is an important standard in digital humanities research allowing open access collections to be used as research data and for research software to be written once and used with many collections.

The course will start with looking to find IIIF collections using the IIIF Guides website which was developed by the University of St Andrews during COVID to help discover IIIF resources. This is a common method to find IIIF resources but often in DH research you have images which aren’t available as IIIF. To cover this use case the course will demonstrate how to upload images and add metadata to an item in the Internet Archive. Once participants have digital items to work with the course will move onto demonstrate the different tools that can be used with this material.

The first tool that will be demonstrated is called Allmaps and allows users to geo-reference a IIIF image of a map to locate on a modern map. This can allow the overlaying of maps of different periods for comparison and also provides access to maps of locations from institutions across the world. After looking at Allmaps the workshop will move onto annotations and start with looking at the annotation functionality of IMMARKUS, a DH focused IIIF viewer. Once participants are familiar with annotations we will move on to looking at how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be used to transcribe and translate IIIF images. This will be achieved by taking participants through a number of Jupiter Notebooks and supplying IIIF images to work with. Using and experimenting with LLM prompts participants will see both the power of LLMs but also some of the issues to be aware of.

The tutors of the course are well experienced in delivering hands-on training both remotely and in person. The course will be extended from previous courses given quarterly online and in person at the iPres conference in New Zealand, in Australia as part of the AI4LAM conference, in Victoria as part of DHSI and various other venues around the world. This course will be different from previous courses which gave an introduction to IIIF with a focus on practical use cases that will fit with digital humanities practices. This includes much more of a focus on using IIIF with tools and working with large language models (LLM).

Learning outcomes

Participants will recognise IIIF enabled collections and will be able to use them to achieve digital humanities research using a variety of IIIF tools. The course will be hands on and an online workbook will be developed so attendees can refer back to the course after it is finished.

Target audience

The workshop is open to anyone and has been delivered in the past to attendees at multiple levels of technical ability. The workshop will be accompanied by an online workbook with step by step instructions so everyone can keep up with the hands-on exercises. There are plenty of opportunities for attendees to ask questions and to cover topics in detail if people are interested in the technical details.

Special requirements for technical support

Instructors will use a laptop connected to a projector. Participants should bring their own laptops and collections they would like to work with. All will require internet access.

Expected number of participants: 20 - 30

Draft agenda

Assuming a workshop of three and half hours for example 9:00am - 12:30pm.

Instructors

Glen Robson Glen Robson is the IIIF Technical Coordinator of the IIIF Consortium. He coordinates the maintenance of the IIIF specifications, supporting the IIIF community infrastructure and aiding early implementers of IIIF. He runs regular online training sessions attended by participants around the world and also in person workshops in Canada, UK and Australia.

Martin R. Kalfatovic Martin R. Kalfatovic is Managing Director of the IIIF Consortium in this role, his remit is to expand use of the IIIF standard and APIs, grow participation in the IIIF Consortium, and enhance the global user experience of digital objects across all formats, including images, audio-visual, and 3D.