Implementation of the IIIF for Natural History Collections

Abstract

IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) is an exchange standard for sharing multimedia representations of objects on-line. It has been adopted by many institutions and commercial partners in the digital humanities community but, before Synthesys+, was not used in the Natural History community. CETAF (Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities) IDs are stable HTTP URIs identifying Natural History specimens on the internet. SYNTHESYS+ is a European Commission funded project creating an integrated European infrastructure for natural history collections. This document is the final deliverable of Task 4.3 in Work Package 4: Digital Standards and Processes. Specifically, it addresses the goal of growing the network of Natural History IIIF providers by producing an implementation manual for IIIF and CETAF Identifiers in our community. The motivations for adopting IIIF for Natural History image data are outlined. The characteristics of IIIF, as a standard and community of implementers, are layed out. Specific mechanisms for linking IIIF into existing data services are described. Finally, implementation case studies are presented. Clear recommendations are made throughout. Although this document marks the official end of work on Task 4.3 the outputs of this part of SYNTHESYS+ will have a long-term positive effect on the way Natural History data is shared.