IIIF for museums, explained
What IIIF is; who’s using it; and why you should consider it (with examples)
This is the highlights of a talk I gave at #MATech2019.
There is a buzz around IIIF within the museum community, but it’s not always clear what IIIF is or why museums should be interested.
Reasons for your museum to consider IIIF:
- It’s free
- It’s open
- It will save you time, money and stress
- It will help you deliver more useful, interesting and worthwhile digital products
This post explains:
- What is IIIF (the truly non-technical version)?
- Why is IIIF game-changing for museums?
- Who is using IIIF?
- What can I do with IIIF?
What is IIIF (the truly non-technical version)?
When I was a teacher we worked on the following principle:
If the class doesn’t understand what you’re teaching, it’s not their fault. It means you’re explaining it wrong.
I think that IIIF hasn’t gone fully mainstream in museums yet because it’s a technical thing being explained by technical people, which works really well when you have a technical audience. When you’re talking to people like me, it’s hard for us to understand.
I think of IIIF like this…
Imagine you’re going on holiday to a country you have never visited before. You’re packing your suitcase.
Socks ✔️
Hat ✔️
Phone charger ✔️
and then you think “Oh no! What plugs do they have in this country I’ve never visited before”. So you Google it, and it’s the same plugs as you have in your country! Hooray! One less thing to worry about. 👍
That ‘one less thing’ feeling is the exact feeling developers get when you tell them images are IIIF-compatible, as evidenced below.
The reasons the devs love IIIF are:
- It’s a known quantity. Easier to estimate and to work with. No learning required
- A ton of reliable, high-quality tools already exist so we have a big headstart in terms of feature development, with reduced risk that the tool causes us problems as we develop the project.
What does IIIF stand for?
International Image Interoperability Framework.
Why is IIIF game-changing for museums?
What all this means for you is that your budget is going to go further and you’re going to get a much better outcome.
Here’s a comparison of two projects with the same budget. One is using non-IIIF images, the other has IIIF images:
Sample non-IIIF image tasklist
- Research the DAMS and API
- Work out technical approach
- Test approach with proof of concept
- Find some problems
- Rectify the problems
- Build the image pipeline
- Build an image viewer from scratch or find one that should work with this image format
- Iron out the bugs
- Launch
Sample IIIF image tasklist
- Hook into IIIF APIs
- Point them at existing tools, e.g. image viewer, OCR text search, colour correction etc
- Spend the remaining time building creative, innovative, fun enhancements that really meet the needs of the institution and its users.
- Launch
- Get promoted
- Win awards
Open-access
IIIF is open-access friendly. If your museum is working towards open-access, releasing your images as IIIF-compatible adds an extra layer of openness, as your images will be compatible with millions of others from hundreds of institutions, making it easier to do some really neat stuff. There are some examples a little further down this article.
Who is using IIIF?
Over 500 million images have been made IIIF-compatible by hundreds of institutions.
Many of these institutions are listed below. As you’ll see, museums (in bold) currently make up a small percentage of IIIF users compared to libraries and universities. Museums are missing out!
Lots of DAMS and Collection Management Systems already support IIIF, so you might be IIIF-compliant already! If not, have a word with the manufacturer.
The IIIF Community is active and supportive. It’s a great place to ask for guidance if you need it.
What can I do with IIIF?
Existing tools — viewers
Open-source IIIF viewers include Mirador and Universal Viewer. Both of these offer really powerful tools for your users — like zoom, pan, compare, flip — straight out of the box.
We often use OpenSeadragon as the foundation for our viewers. The IIIF website has a longer list.
Existing tools — storytelling
storiiies.cogapp.com showcases how IIIF images can be annotated, and those annotations used to guide your user around the image.
Try the Storiiies Editor (alpha) for a lightning-quick way to create a tour around an image. If you need a IIIF image, paste this link into the IIIF info.json field https://media.nga.gov/iiif/public/objects/5/2/1/7/8/52178-primary-0-nativeres.ptif
As you’ll soon see, these things just work. That’s why developers love IIIF, and why us non-techies should embrace it too.
Other ways people have used IIIF creatively
These are the examples I shared in my #MATech2019 presentation.
Mirador side-by-side image comparison
Example Storiiie with 700-year-old book and the accompanying blog post
X-raying Balenciaga by the V&A
Exhibition imagery powered by IIIF by Harvard Art Museums
Snazz up your phone by cover.boutique
The Transcriptinator crowd-sourced OCR correction by Tristan Roddis
Exquisite Corpse by Jeff Steward, Harvard Art Museums
Antlitz.ninja by Leander Siege
Puzzles by Michael Appleby, Yale Center for British Art
A Browser-based Bladerunner Interface by Andy Cummins
Slow Looking (press the eye) by Sarah Wambold, Clyfford Still Museum
