IIIF
What is IIIF?
Exhibit is fully compatible with IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework). IIIF is an open standard for delivering high-quality, attributed digital objects online at scale. It’s also an international community developing and implementing the IIIF APIs, backed by a consortium of leading academic and cultural institutions.
Universal Viewer
Exhibit is built using The Universal Viewer, a leading open source IIIF viewer adopted by many Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums internationally. Both Exhibit and the Universal Viewer are supported by a Steering Group who sponsor and guide development.
Use existing IIIF content with Exhibit
Exhibit uses IIIF content by importing ‘IIIF manifests’. A IIIF manifest is the package that contains all the information related to a particular digital object, including the image itself as well as the metadata. IIIF manifests are available via a URL that can often be found alongside online catalogue records.
There is currently no central search engine for IIIF. Each institution has its own method for making manifests available.
Here are some examples of what a IIIF manifest looks like:
- https://www.loc.gov/item/41038111/manifest.json
- https://collections.st-andrews.ac.uk/77713/manifest
- https://www.loc.gov/item/00007086/manifest.json
You can find links to catalogues using IIIF and more detail about how to find IIIF manifests at https://iiif.io/guides/finding_resources/
Once you have a IIIF manifest URL you can add it to your exhibit using the Add Item dialogue.
Create your own IIIF
To make your own images compatible with IIIF there are a number of options available.
- Set up your own online catalogue. For example, Mnemoscene helped the Royal Pavilion and Museums Trust set up their IIIF-compatible online catalogue .
- If setting up your own catalogue is not a practical solution for you, there are tools such as biiif-template which can be used to easily generate IIIF and host it for free on Github. See the video tutorials for help.
Get in touch if you would like to learn more about how Mnemoscene can help you create your own IIIF content.