IIIF services
The UBL are working to offer services for using our digital collections with IIIF.
Image access via APIs¶
IIIF Image API v2.1¶
Available for specific collections. Access to all public domain items in Digital Collections is being realised in 2020.
Access to non-public domain items is limited to access via Digital Collections; for some collections only on-premises access is available. Implementation of the IIIF Authentication API to help with worldwide access to restricted items is not yet planned.
IIIF Image API v3 support is not yet planned, but it is on our radar.
Item and collection information¶
IIIF Presentation API v2.1¶
The IIIF Presentation API provides a data structure for presenting full objects (consisting of images and related annotations) and collections of objects. This data structure is called a manifest. The current stable version is v2.1.1, although v3.0 is almost out of beta.
Manifests are available for specific collections. Manifest generation for all public domain items in Digital Collections is being realised in 2020.
IIIF Presentation API v3 support is not yet planned, but it is on our radar.
Annotation storage¶
IIIF has annotations in its core. One of the advantages of offering digital images through IIIF manifests is that tools like Mirador provide an easy way of annotating the images. By default Mirador stores annotations in the browser's cache and without any provenance, which means that only people with access to that exact browser on the computer that was used to create annotations can see them. Also, they can be updated and deleted by anyone with access to the computer.
Other ways of storing annotations are available, although each may work in different ways.
Simple Annotation Server¶
A Simple Annotation Store/Server that integrated with Mirador 2.x used to be available, but its lack of authentication and authorisation options led us to put it behind a firewall.
WordPress¶
In one pilot project, a WordPress plugin wp-mirador-anno was developed to store annotations with provenance and access control in Simple Annotation Server. We are working to make this plugin more widely available.
Web Annotation Protocol¶
The Web Annotation Protocol is the protocol defined by the Web Annotations group. It is currently not supported, although it is on the radar of the CDS.
FromThePage¶
For transcription of Library collections and other collections available via IIIF you can use the FromThePage platform. Transcriptions made in FromThePage become available as annotations and can also be exported as TEI XML or XHTML.
Searching Content¶
IIIF Content Search API¶
The IIIF Content Search API specifies how (contents of) annotations can be searched and how search endpoints are linked to from Manifests.
The latest version of this API is v1.0. It is currently not supported for any IIIF content.
Change Discovery API¶
IIIF Change Discovery API v0.3: not available
WebSub hub for notifications of changes to resources: not available
Linked Data Notifications¶
LDN inbox for notifications about annotations on our resources: not available