This MCN 2019 IIIF Special Interest Group panel looks at the lessons learned from the experience of IIIF practitioners in terms of what it takes to institutionally adopt IIIF, and what it takes to collaboratively define the ever evolving IIIF specifications. The panelists share experiences from deploying IIIF as a shared standard across different collection types within an institution, such as different curatorial departments within a museum, or across several GLAMs collections within an institution, such as an academic campus. Panelists are David Newbury, Enterprise Software Architect at the J. Paul Getty Trust, Thomas Raich, Director of IT at the Yale University Art Gallery, and Emmanuelle Delmas-Glass, Collections Data Manager at the Yale Center for British Art.

1. IIIF: Collaboration and Community Built
Technological Innovations
NOVEMBER 7,2019

2. What is IIIF?
@workergnome- 11/7/2019

3. IIIF Image API
It’s a standard for getting the right pixels of images:
https://iiif.archivelab.org/iiif/mma_irises_436528/1655,2134,985,560/full/0/default.j
pg
https://iiif.archivelab.org/iiif/mma_irises_436528/full/full/0/default.jpg

4. IIIF Presentation API
It’s a standard for describing sequences of images…

5. IIIF Presentation API
…and for providing context for those images to people.
It is not a metadata exchange standard. It’s a presentation standard.
It also helps manage rights information:

6. IIIF Presentation API
It also provides a way to annotate images.
These annotations provide a standard way to
allow anyone to make a comment on a specific
region of a work.
It also allows a publisher to provide some of those
annotations along with the images.

7. Other APIs
Content Search API:
given a set of published annotations, find the image that holds that annotation?
Authentication API:
How do you define the process of gaining access to restricted images?

8. Why should you care?
There are other tools to embed, zoom, annotate, etc., etc:
IIIF is a standard, a system, and a community.
IIIF means no vendor lock-in.
IIIF means that the parts work together, across institutions and tools.
IIIF means that you can use tools, libraries, and build on the experience of others.

9. 9 MCN 2019
The View from Here:
institutionally adopt IIIF
Thomas R. Raich
Yale University Art Gallery

10. 010 MCN 2019
Museums@Yale have a strong history of collaboration
• DAM purchase, development and use
‒BAC and YUAG proposed DAM purchase (OpenText) ~2008
‒Peabody NH joined and Provost-funded support group formed
‒Working groups followed over the years
• Further collaboration in storage, research and teaching spaces
‒Yale purchased the Bayer Pharmaceutical property in 2008 (>100 acres)
‒Offices, teaching space, conservation and art storage
‒IPCH (Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage)

11. 011 MCN 2019
Museums@Yale have a strong history of collaboration
• Today
‒Yale Library entered as a strategic partner
• Working groups expand with larger cross-campus presence
‒A one-stop search across Yale is a priority
Cross Collection Discovery
‒DAM v2 (2017) with Preservation system (NetX + Preservica)
‒IIIF as a service (in development)
• What happened along the way

12. Academic IT
Suttle (Chair)
The Academic IT Steering
Committee provides
oversight and guidance for
investments and
management of the systems
and services that support
the educational and
academic mission of the
University including
admissions, athletics,
student life, housing,
advising, teaching and
learning, and systems that
manage or interact with
student records.
Primary Beneficiaries:
Faculty and Students
Support Staff: Livingston
Foundational
IT
Barden (Chair)
The Infrastructure IT
Steering
Committee provides
oversight and guidance for
investments and
management of systems
and services that support
the entire University
including telephony,
infrastructure, storage, web
platforms, help and support,
identity services,
integration, information
security, and data reporting
and analytics..
Primary Beneficiaries:
Entire Yale Community
The Clinical IT Steering
Committee provides
oversight and guidance for
investments and
management of systems
and services that support
the clinical mission of the
University including clinical
delivery and patient
experience.
Primary Beneficiaries:
Clinicians and Patients
Clinical IT
Borrelli (Chair)
Administrativ
e IT
Murphy (Chair)
The Administrative IT
Steering Committee
provides oversight and
guidance for investments
and management of
systems and services that
support the business and
administrative functions of
the university, including
finance, procurement,
human resources, payroll,
facilities, public safety,
advancement and research
compliance.
Primary Beneficiaries:
Employees, Alumni, and
Donors
Research IT
Schiffer (Chair)
Primary Beneficiaries:
Research Faculty
The Research IT Steering
Committee provides
oversight and guidance for
investments and
management of systems
and services that support
research mission of the
University including high
performance computing,
research lifecycle
infrastructure, visualization,
and research analytics.
The Cultural Heritage IT
Steering Committee
provides oversight and
guidance for investments
and management of
systems and services that
support Yale’s collections
and digital media in pursuit
of Yale’s mission of research
and scholarship, education,
and preservation.
Primary Beneficiaries:
Museum and Library
Patrons and Scholars
Cultural
Heritage
Gibbons (Chair)
New campus leadership
created a CH Pillar

13. 013 MCN 2019
Campus working groups to
determine needs and goals
• All day design-thinking groups
‒Define needs and develop use cases
• Focused reports
• Lots and lots of meetings
• Senior leadership buy-in

14. 14 MCN 2019
What’s next for Yale
• Insights helped to create and motivate current projects
‒Cross Collection Discovery / IIIF / LOD
‒Cycle of budget, needs development and execution (meetings!)
‒Grant development
• Continued partnerships
‒Conservation
‒Physical storage
‒Teaching spaces
‒Campus workshops

15. 15 MCN 2019
What’s next for YUAG
Playing Catch-up
Preparing Museum to take advantage of hosted solutions
Training staff on concepts
Field of Dreams project (cleaning data)
Beginning exploration of new website
Incorporate Deep Zoom
Expose as much as possible

16. 016 MCN 2019
Thank you

17. YCBA: Transitioning from early
adopter to using a centrally
hosted service: challenges and
opportunities
Emmanuelle Delmas-Glass
Collections Data Manager
Yale Center for British Art
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

18. IIIF history at Yale
• 2015: Yale University becomes core founding member of
the IIIF Consortium (1 out of 15 then, 53 today)
• 2015: YCBA first Yale unit to deploy IIIF Image and
Presentation APIs for its online collections catalog
‒ today: 81,000+ IIIF images out of 93,500+ images
online for 34,000+ public domain collection objects
‒ meets Yale’s Open Access Policy
• 2017: Yale-wide Cultural Heritage IT conversations with
Vice-Provost for Collections & Scholarly Publications on
collaboration and deep structural changes to support the
teaching and learning mission of Yale
• Early 2020: deployment of Yale-wide IIIF enabled Content
Delivery System; first piece of Cross-Collection Discovery
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

19. @edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019
YCBA Mirador open source viewer for IIIF images and manifests

20. YCBA Mirador gallery view
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

21. @edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019
Comparing YCBA, Getty, and Colby images in YBCA Mirador

22. YCBA manifests as gateway to machine readable data
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

23. IIIF manipulation in browser
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

24. This is a photo + caption slide. Caption goes here. 22pt Segoe UI, up to two lines.
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

25. @edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019
Collaboration continuum: mandate + funding + convergence
of units’ needs = deep structural changes
Waibel, G., Zorich, D., & Erway, R. (2009). Libraries, archives and museums: Catalysts along the
collaboration continuum. Art Libraries Journal, 34(2), 17-20. doi:10.1017/S0307472200015832

26. @edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019
High level IIIF Content Delivery Service
infrastructure
• Replaces a prior CDS, is maintained by Yale central ITS
• IIIF enabled CDS for Yale’s museums (YCBA, YUAG, YPM) but not Yale
libraries collections; the library is pursuing its own IIIF
implementation. Collaboration on the preparation of the CDS
specification
‒ Convergence on the structure of manifests
• Recently migrated to new DAMS shared across the museums (NetX)
‒ Museums to send image technical metadata from NetX to CDS
• Museums keep their individual Collections Management Systems
(TMS for art museums, EMu for natural history museum)
‒ Museums to send JSON with object descriptive & administrative
metadata to CDS

27. Challenges
• Change in workflow for assigning access levels to image: upper maximum limit instead of small,
medium, full (previous access levels had to be mapped to the current ones)
• User education: users not locked in specific images sizes but sliding scale
• Change in source image format: from JPEG2000 to pyramidal TIFF (JPEG images will be served
by the IIIF image server, extracted and converted from pyramidal TIFF versions)
• Put W3C Activity Streams (JSON-based syntax) in place to indicate when a IIIF resource is
created, updated, and deleted
• Compromise on data for IIIF manifests: no enhancement in scope at this point in time
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

28. Opportunities
• Change in workflow:
‒ Imaging Manager still assigns access levels to images in the DAMS
‒ Investigation of shared tools and practices to assign access levels (Goobi) and administrative
metadata not captured anywhere else (page sequence)
‒ YCBA is in control of metadata in its JSON files sent to CDS
• User education: never miss the opportunity to connect with users
• Change in source image format from JPEG2000 to pyramidal TIFF: better performance
• Activity Streams: better process for aggregators (generation of Yale IIIF resources will rely on a
system monitoring metadata and image changes)
• Compromise on data for IIIF manifests: opportunity to discuss adoption of rights standardized
licenses and tools
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

29. Opportunities: metadata for IIIF manifests
• Very light metadata requirements (per IIIF specifications):
‒ Label (human readable label, name or title for the resource)
‒ Logo (A small image that represents an individual or organization associated with the
resource it is attached to)
‒ Attribution (text about copyright or ownership statements, or simply an acknowledgement
of the owning and/or publishing institution)
• Suggested metadata (by YCBA):
‒ License: A URI link ((not a human readable label) to an external resource that describes the
license or rights statement under which the resource may be used
• Opportunity to discuss adoption of standardized licenses and tools across Yale units:
‒ Creative Common Licenses and RightsStatements.org
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

30. Conclusion
IIIF provides Yale University with the
opportunity to work collaboratively to
meet best practices for providing
access to its collections in the global
networked environment
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019

31. What’s Next for IIIF?
@workergnome- 11/7/2019

32. History & Governance
• 2006–2011 - Shared Canvas: the manuscript-Focused Predecessor of IIIF
• 2012 IIIF Image and Metadata API Specs 1.0
• 2014 Image & Presentation API 2.0
• 2015 First IIIF Community Meeting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
• 2015 IIIF Consortium Formed, 11 Founding Members, now 40 members
• 2016 Search API specs
• 2017 Authentication API Specs
• 2018 Long-term strategy: IIIF Managing Director hired

33. IIIF 3.0: The Audio/Visual One
The big change:
IIIF is now aware of time.

34. @workergnome - 11/7/2019
IIIF Discovery API
How to support aggregators?

35. @workergnome - 11/7/2019
New Viewers

36. New Emphasis: Using images, not just publishing them

37. https://iiif.io/ and https://github.com/IIIF/awesome-iiif
IIIF Museums Community Group: https://iiif.io/community/groups/museums/
NetX DAMS IIIF functionality demo: https://tinyurl.com/y67tvsjd
Monthly group calls, next one on Tuesday November 12 at 11AM EST
@edgartdata @yalebritishart - 11/7/2019