IIIF for Research (IIIF4R) Network

This research network will investigate the potential for innovative forms of scholarly discussion and interchange offered by the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). IIIF enables much easier sharing, annotation and manipulation of digital images from libraries, archives, galleries, and museums across institutional and national boundaries, and offers researchers exciting new possibilities for joint analysis, documentation and discussion of primary materials. IIIF has been one of the most successful digital humanities initiatives of recent years and has been adopted by a wide range of heritage institutions across the world, including the Vatican Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the British Library, the Digital Repository of Ireland, and the National Libraries of Wales and Scotland. Major libraries of historic manuscripts, such as the Parker Library at the University of Cambridge and the Durham Priory Library, are being made available in their entirety using IIIF. IIIF-compliant browsers such as Mirador enable images from collections in different countries to be compared side-by-side at very high magnification, offering the prospect of easily creating large trans-national collections of images of manuscripts and other primary materials. IIIF browsers also support user annotation of images, thereby potentially fostering the emergence of new forms of scholarly presentation and shared commentary on primary materials and artefacts. Some of the possibilities have already been demonstrated by scholars such as Jeffrey C. Witt of Loyola University, who has used IIIF to generate image-based scholarly editions.

The objectives of this research network are to organise four workshops at Glasgow, Durham, Dublin and Aberystwyth which will build a dialogue between arts and humanities researchers, curators and information professionals intended to develop research-driven agendas for the deployment and development of IIIF to investigate a wide range of primary materials and archives relevant to humanities research domains. The workshops will build on acknowledged leadership in development and promotion of IIIF in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. They will demonstrate the many different ways in which IIIF supports innovative analysis and commentary on the various types of source material used by arts and humanities researchers. They will document user cases where the facilities offered by IIIF are valuable in addressing particular research questions. Reports and presentations from the workshops will be made available to facilitate future development of IIIF and to encourage scholarly engagement with the potential of IIIF. The workshops will also be used to develop larger-scale projects making use of IIIF, including it is hoped projects suitable for funding in future UK-Ireland joint funding calls.

The great strength of the IIIF4R network is the way in which it brings together a wide range of researchers, technical specialists, librarians, archivists and users of heritage materials to explore the potential of IIIF to enable new forms of engagement with heritage collections of many different types. Already, for many major institutions such as the British Museum, Bodleian Library, Cambridge University and Vatican Library, IIIF mediates the way in which both public and researchers engage with the digital platforms for their online collections. By exploring new ways in which IIIF can support and represent research, the work of the network will have a profound impact on public engagement with cultural heritage.

The main formal areas in which the impact of the network can be developed are: first, in informing future digitisation policy of libraries, archives, museums and galleries, and their roll-out of IIIF; and second, in encouraging wider and more engaged public use of digital collections of heritage institution through the pedagogic and presentational possibilities offered by IIIF. The network will undertake specific activities to pursue these areas of impact as follows. In all cases, we will work closely with the IIIF community, and specifically with the IIIF Discovery for Humans community to ensure maximum impact from the workshops.

- Workshops will be open to the interested public as well as researchers and will be publicised beyond the academy. We will consult workshop attendees about ways in which these findings could most effectively will be disseminated to enable most effective, and widespread communication.

- There will be a website which provides information on IIIF, case studies and presentations from the workshop and links to further resources which will enhance public awareness of the potential of IIIF. The network will also maintain Twitter and Instagram accounts.

- The website will contain a report on the workshops, aggregating and analysing findings, with detailed raw data in appendices.

- The website will also contain introductory materials for use by researchers which could be adopted and adapted by librarians, research networks or others. These would be based on and informed by the workshops. There will also be case studies, featuring projects which have successfully adopted IIIF.

- The network will develop a set of guidelines or recommendations for practitioners (technical developers, librarians or archivists) to inform the way they prioritise, scope, implement and promote IIIF within their research support programmes.

- The network will produce a short white paper for funding or strategic bodies, recommending ways in which the potential of IIIF could be enabled or realised within national or trans-national schemes, programmes, initiatives or networks.

These outputs will be disseminated and promoted as appropriate to their content and intended audience. Routes include subject or discipline-specific research networks, similar networks for librarians (particularly those involved in research support) and archivists as well as members of the IIIF consortium and community.