Using Digital Collections Content with IIIF

Since IIIF content is interoperable and portable, you can easily compare images from different collections, or even from different institutions, by importing images into a IIIF-enabled viewer that supports comparison, such as the web-based Mirador viewer.

In order to import IIIF resources into other IIIF-enabled viewers or tools, you’ll need the item’s IIIF Manifest. A IIIF Manifest is a JSON-formatted document that contains all the information about the image (or images in the case of paginated objects) along with information on how the image(s) should be presented inside a viewer. Luckily, you do not need to be able to read or understand a IIIF Manifest to make use of it! Each IIIF Manifest represents a discrete resource, such as a photograph or a newspaper issue with multiple pages.

To use the IIIF Manifest, you first need to locate the IIIF Manifest URL for the resources that you wish to compare. For resources in the UCLA Library Digital Collections portal, you will find the IIIF Manifest URL in the “Find this Item” section of the resource’s item page.

To copy the IIIF Manifest URL, right click the IIIF logo and select “Copy Link.” Clicking on the IIIF logo will open the IIIF Manifest in a new tab in your browser.

A IIIF Manifest URL from our collections will look something like this: https://iiif.library.ucla.edu/ark%3A%2F21198%2Fzz002h6jvn/manifest

Once you have your IIIF Manifest URLs, you can import the IIIF-enabled content to Mirador or other IIIF-friendly viewers and tools. Try it out with UCLA Library’s Mirador viewer following these steps:

• Step 1: Open the UCLA Library Mirador viewer. Copy the IIIF Manifest URL for one of the resources that you would like to compare, for example this mural photograph.
• Step 2: Click on the blue " + Start Here " button in the top left corner.
• Step 3: Click on the blue " + Add Resource " button at the bottom right corner of the page and paste the IIIF Manifest URL into the text box. Click "Add." The item should now appear in the list of available IIIF resources. Click on the resource you just added to open it in Mirador.
• Step 4: Copy the IIIF Manifest URL for the second resource that you would like to compare, for example a second mural photograph. Select the blue " + " button in the top left corner. Click the " + Add Resource " button to import this IIIF resource. You can add more items to the list of resources and compare multiple images side-by-side in the Mirador viewer.

The images used in this example are from the Nancy Tovar Murals of East L.A. Collection.

With IIIF Manifests, you can also build your own digital exhibits using items from the UCLA Library Digital Collections. Exhibits can be used to create a narrative around digital resources, recontextualize items in the collections, or highlight a particular history or experience using primary sources from one or more institutional digital collections. Thanks to the efforts of the IIIF community, there are a number of IIIF-friendly tools that allow you to create exhibits using IIIF, such as Wax, Exhibit.so, Storiiies, and Collection Builder.

Exhibit.so, a browser-based IIIF storytelling application, allows you to build exhibits using IIIF Manifests with just a few clicks. Exhibits made with Exhibit.so can be shared via a URL or can be embedded into any web page using HTML. See the exhibit “Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion” by Edward Martin embedded below. To create your own exhibit, follow the Exhibit.so’s Creating an Exhibit guide.

IIIF also supports web annotation of images using the W3C Web Annotation Model. Annotating images requires connecting a dedicated annotation server to a viewing interface, however there are a few IIIF-friendly tools that support annotation through a built-in annotation environment, such as Annonatate or Recogito. The Mirador viewer has an Annotation plugin, which does require a dedicated annotation server to store annotations, but you can try out the annotation feature using the Mirador Annotations demo. Try importing a resource into the Annotations demo using a IIIF Manifest URL and annotate some images using the annotation tools provided.

There are a variety of IIIF-enabled tools that you can use to work with IIIF resources in addition to the tools mentioned above. Listed here are just a few, but you can explore more options through IIIF Awesome’s lists of Image Viewers and Exhibition and Guided Viewing Tools, or on the IIIF website’s “Resources for end users”.

• Tranksribus
• “Transkribus is a comprehensive platform for the digitisation, AI-powered text recognition, transcription and searching of historical documents – from any place, any time, and in any language.”
• Recogito
• Recogito supports annotation of entities such as people, places, and relationships in text and image documents that can be exported for use in other data applications.
• Storiiies
• Storiiies is a web platform for creating digital stories around a single IIIF resource.
• IIIF Curation Viewer
• IIIF Curation Viewer is an image viewer compliant with IIIF standards. In addition to zoom and page-view capabilities, it offers a light box feature that allows users to cut and curate parts of images from multiple IIIF objects.