Using IIIF for research
Quick review
Two APIs we'll focus on today
- Image API
Quick Exercise: go to https://www.learniiif.org/image-api/playground and manipulate the test image
- Presentation API
"Manifest" - this is the bundle of information that IIIF relies on to enable sharing of books and manuscripts across viewers and institutions
Finding IIIF Materials "in the wild"
How we encounter IIIF materials at various repositories varies widely. Explore some of the collections below to get a sense of what steps you might need to go through to find IIIF material to work with.
- OCLC IIIF Explorer (experimental): https://researchworks.oclc.org/iiif-explorer/
- Bayerische StaatsBibliothek: https://app.digitale-sammlungen.de/bookshelf/
- Stanford Special Collections: https://bit.ly/stanford_iiif
- Biblissima (aggregates many European libraries): https://iiif.biblissima.fr/collections/
- The Vatican: https://digi.vatlib.it/
- Harvard: https://library.harvard.edu/digital-collections
- Many, many more: https://bit.ly/iiif_collections
Quick Exercise:
- Open an instance of Mirador 2 - this one, for instance or this one
- Find an item from the collections listed above that you might be interested in exploring further
- Find the IIIF badge and drag it into Mirador, or use the IIIF manifest URL and add it to the Mirador workspace
- As a point of comparison, use the same IIIF manifest URL and add it to the Universal Viewer
- Note: Different software for different user experiences, same source content
The Basics: Zooming and Comparison
We're going to continue to use the Mirador Viewer, version 2, for this example, though version 3 would work as well if you prefer that - see the Mirador 3 demo site
Many research uses simply call for being able to zoom in to specific details, which nearly all of the IIIF viewers do by default. Side-by-side comparison is another basic research need.
Quick Exercise:
- Using one of the Mirador demo sites listed above, build a workspace view that compares two or more manuscripts.
Creating Annotations
There are many ways to create annotations in IIIF. One of the simplest ways to start is to use Mirador to create "commenting" or "transcription" annotations.
A very nice example of the use of these kinds of annotations can be found at the Vatican: https://spotlight.vatlib.it/humanist-library
Quick Exercise
- Using the Mirador example you worked with previously, add some simple annotations to your object
Using Annotations to Drive a User Experience
Another way to use annotations and images together for research or teaching purposes is with tools developed to guide a viewer through a curated experience. We'll talk about various tools to do this over the course of the week, but for today let's look at one approach developed by CogApp.
- CogApp: Storiiies - http://storiiies.cogapp.com/
- Storiiies Editor: https://storiiies-editor.cogapp.com/
- Example: https://storiiies.cogapp.com/viewer/aeqi/The-Stoning-of-Saint-Stephen
Transcriptions are a Kind of Annotation
For this section, we'll look at using IIIF to support transcription projects using FromThePage
Example:
Questions to pursue this week
- How do we save and host annotations and research outputs?
- How do we credit contributors?
- How do we notify others when new annotations are published?
- Others?