DIGITAL MANUSCRIPT INTEROPERABILITYSharedCanvas and IIIF in Practice

Benjamin Albritton

Digital Manuscript Product Manager

blalbrit@stanford.edu

@bla222

Summary: 2010-2013

• Funding from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

• Initial meeting of scholars and curators – Paris, 2010

• Digital Manuscript Technical Working Group – 2010-pres.• Data Model: SharedCanvas• Data Sharing Framework: IIIF (International Image Interoperabiity Framework)

DMSTech and IIIF• Bibliothèque nationale de France• British Library• Oxford University• Stanford University• Johns Hopkins University• University of Fribourg (e-codices)• Saint Louis University (T-PEN)• Drew University (DM)• TextGrid• Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Yale University• Harvard University• Cambridge University• ARTstor• Cornell University• Princeton University• Walters Art Museum• National Library of Norway• The National Archives (UK)• … and more

Interoperability – One Definition

• Primary Goal: • Image and metadata sharing across collections and institutions

• “Killer app”: • a single viewer that reads content from multiple repositories

Imagine an image viewer…

With content from any repository…

That lets scholars compare…

And investigate in detail…

http://iiif.io/mirador/

Synopsis• Two primary motivators

• Comparative viewing of images• Viewing of annotations

• Part of the current Stanford-led Mellon grant for Digital Manuscript Interoperability• Goals:

• Support for use-cases at Yale, University of Toronto and Johns Hopkins University

• Comparative viewing for manuscript images in a book, across books, across collections, across repositories

• Support annotation and transcription viewing• Support light-weight annotation creation

How do we do it?

1. Represent the physical object in a common data model (SharedCanvas)

2. Deliver the data via common API (IIIF)

Data Model: SharedCanvas

http://www.shared-canvas.org

How do we do it?

1. Represent the physical object in a common data model (SharedCanvas)

2. Deliver the data via common API (IIIF)http://iiif.io

IIIF API Development and Current Status

• Work driven by real-world use-cases• Scholarly projects and interviews• Personae developed

• http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlss/dms-viewer/personas/

• Development work referred back to these use-cases on an ongoing basis

• Confirmed that APIs actually support real needs

• Status• Image API at 1.1 release• Metadata API at 1.0 release

Deliver via API: IIIF

http://library.stanford.edu/iiif/image-api

Implementation• Meeting at Harvard in October 2013

• Eight institutions• Stanford• Yale• Harvard• University of Kentucky (vHMML)• Oxford University• University of Fribourg (e-codices)• Los Alamos National Laboratory• Biblissima (France)

• Goal: 6-8 institutions with:• Mirador installed• Showing content from all other institutions• Prototype ability to add more content• Development contributions?

Result: 9 institutions sharing content

Mirador Development Process• Two-year grant cycle:

• Design• Creation of personas:

• http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlss/dms-viewer/personas/

• Creation of mock-ups and wire-frames• http://www.stanford.edu/group/dlss/dms-viewer/mocks/#1

• Development• Phased development of different components

• Comparative image viewing – COMPLETE• Annotation and transcription viewing – IN PROCESS• Annotation creation - FUTURE

• 1.0 public release planned for December 2013• 2.0 public release planned for December 2014• Post-2014: ongoing development of a community of adopters and

committers for this open source project

Next Steps: Image Choice

Next Steps: Image Choice

Next Steps: Annotation viewing

Next Steps: Transcription viewing

Next Steps: Multiple text representations

Next Steps: Workspace Sharing

The Beinecke as Institutional Leader• Technical implementation is relatively easy• Institutional buy-in to share content, and lots of it, is more

of a challenge• The Beinecke could play a leading role as one of the

major North American manuscript repositories• Benefits:

• Increased access to scholarly and public use of the content• Transcription and annotation of Beinecke content• Crowd-supported cataloging• Comparison of Beinecke books with related or comparable books

in other repositories in a single interface