The International Image Interoperability Framework: why it's a game-changer for digital libraries

The International Image Interoperability Framework
Why It’s a Game-Changer for Digital Libraries
Dr John B Howard, University Librarian
University College Dublin
0000-0002-4433-7209

Acknowledgements
Several slides in this presentation were prepared by
and are available at
http://www.slideshare.net/Cogapp/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-iiif-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask
They are used under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Ben Albritton Mike Appleby Tom Cramer Jon Stroop Rob Sanderson Stu Snydman Simeon Warner IIIF.io
@bla222 @mikeapps @tcramer @jpstroop @azaroth42 @stusnydman @zimeon @iiif_io

Images convey cultural heritage
information, and invite scholarly use

end-user wish list
• Copy, Download, Save, Share
• Alter image attributes
– Size, format, rotation, quality (colour, greyscale, bitonal),
mirror image, crop, rotate
• Compare
– Different exemplars of the same imprint
– Different issues of a map, music imprint, book
– Photo super-imposition
• Annotate, transcribe, translate, and share these
information
• Search within an image or set or images for associated
text (OCR, annotations)

service provider wish list …

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

I want deep zoom
(on mobile)

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

…with objects from
other collections

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

I want to allow visitors to annotate
my images online

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

... without losing control of them

And it should be affordable (free), easy
to implement, and easy to use

objectives
Facilitate the delivery and use of images by providing an
open specification for serving images, image metadata,
and more:
• provide scholars rich access to images using uniform
rules for service provision
• provide technical specifications for image servers and
image clients (viewers) to assure interoperability
• develop and share technologies that support IIIF and its
goals, including image application servers and web
clients for viewing IIIF-compliant images and meeting
the functional needs of scholarly users of images

2 core APIs, 2 APIs for value-added services
• Image delivery API
– Serve image metadata
– Serve images
• Metadata Image presentation API
– Serve image manifests, metadata about an image or group of
images to enable retrieval of images and to build linkages to
related information
• Search API (beta)
– “Search within” an image (or group of images described by a
manifest) for associated text—ORC full text, annotations,
transcriptions, etc.
• Authentication API (beta)
– To facilitate management of access to restricted materials

request images, with parameters
{scheme}://{host}/{prefix}/{identifier}/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/{quality}.{format}
The easy parameters:
• Format: image format (jpeg, png, gif, webp)
• Quality: default, grey, bitonal, colour
Advanced parameters:
• Size
• Full, height & width, percentage
• Rotation
• By degrees, mirror flipped
• Region
• Full, by pixel coordinates

Image Delivery API
http://iiif.io/api/image/2.0/

request image metadata
Returns basic information about the requested image in JSON
format
• image identifier (base URL)
• width, height
• sizes available or recommended (optional)
• tiles (tilesize, scale factors)
Information about the server’s functionality
• IIIF Image API version
• image formats, image quality supported
• limitations on rotation capability
{scheme}://{server}{/prefix}/{identifier}/info.json

sample JSON response
Server functionality
Image characteristics

a live example
https://iiif.ucd.ie/loris/ucdlib:33713/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/default.jpg
request the whole image, 640px wide, not
rotated, in JPEG format
https://iiif.ucd.ie/loris/ucdlib:33713/full/640,/0/default.jpg

What is it?
Specifies a request syntax and a response that comprises a manifest,
listing images accessible via a IIIF Image API, and related information
• Describes structure: collection, item, sequence, parts
• Describes properties: labels, descriptive metadata, license, links to
related items, secondary sources, annotation lists
Manifest expresses metadata idiomatically for web interchange
• JSON-LD
• Shared Canvas data model ttp://iiif.io/model/shared-canvas/1.0/:
Makes use of the Open Annotation framework for associating
entities with the resource that is the focus of a canvas (i.e., the
digital surrogate for a physical ‘page; within a source document)
• Observes a range of additional W3C specifications

software implementations
IIP Image
IIP Moo Viewer
digilibFSI Server
Mirador Internet Archive
Book Reader
Image
Server
s
Image
Clients
Image
Apps
FSI Viewer
Leaflet JS
Loris

benefits in action
Mirador viewer
http://iiif.github.io/mirador/
OpenSeadragon
https://openseadragon.github.io/

What is it?
• Many use cases for searching text associated with images
– OCR text of printed documents
– Translations
– Transcriptions of manuscript text
– Annotations and commentary
– Tagging, description
• Specifies search for a single IIIF resource (so “search within”
a resource)
• Identifies an approach to identifying searchable resources
within the Presentation API
• Accommodates auto-completion of terms (provided by an
external service)
• Full spec at http://iiif.io/api/search/1.0

why a game-changer?
• Shifts focus from metadata interoperability to
interoperability of digital content
• Opens a door to the Shared Canvas data model and to
annotation
• Opens a door for development of new software tools
• Creates new opportunities for cooperation & collaboration
among service providers as well as end-users of IIIF-
compatible services
• Creates an approach to interoperability that will be applied
to other media types, such as audio and video (IxIF)
• A harbinger of future directions where W3C specs for
interoperability become more pervasive in digital libraries

what collaborative opportunities?
• Implementation opens doors to sharing,
comparing, annotating across organisations
• Engagement with researchers
• Many challenges in supporting annotations; are
common solutions conceivable?
– Storage
– User management
– Group management
– Ephemeral annotations versus permanent record
– Discovery of annotations

Questions / Discussion
john.b.howard@ucd.ie

UCD implementation: presentation API

UCD implementation: search API, v.1 (beta)

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