The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a widely adopted standard for working with digital objects on the web, such as digitised books, manuscripts, artworks, movies and audio. It’s used by galleries, libraries, archives and museums to present their collections and make them interoperable so they work in software: viewers, annotation tools, digital exhibits and more.
The Manifest is the unit of distribution of IIIF. It’s a document that describes the media, metadata and structure required to present the digital object on the web. A IIIF Viewer loads a Manifest, and generates the user interface to allow the user to navigate (e.g., from page to page of a book) and understand what they are seeing.
While most Manifests today are published by automated workflows, the ability to hand-craft Manifests opens up many potential applications for research and scholarship as well as creation of bespoke content for digital user experiences: stories, slide shows, exhibitions.
A Manifest Editor should:
- be usable no matter what level of IIIF expertise you have
- make IIIF concepts apparent simply through using it
- be an ideal tool whether you are a IIIF expert, in the process of learning IIIF, or have no desire to learn it and simply want to accomplish a content editing task within a cultural heritage context.
To support this vision the tool needs to address two fundamental user goals:
- To quickly and visually assemble IIIF manifests
- To easily create bespoke content for digital user experiences
The product will be customisable to suit different tasks and easy to integrate into existing tools and workflows. While integration and configuration may require technical expertise, the user interface for Manifest editing should not require digital skills beyond the requirements of tools like Google Slides.
Ongoing sustainability of the Manifest Editor is a key concern which will be best addressed by making the tool open source and achieving sector-wide adoption. Furthermore, the development team behind this tool at Digirati will provide ongoing governance for new releases. While the tool will be free to download, adapt and use, Digirati will provide support, development and hosting services for those who require it.