Interoperability in Practice: A Cross-Repository Image Viewer

Session Type: Presentation

Session Description
Imagine an image viewer that allowed a user to compare images hosted in multiple image repositories at different institutions. Imagine that this viewer could be integrated easily with existing image discovery environments and could be hosted anywhere and provide consistent functionality. Imagine further that this application enabled the viewing and creation of image annotations, comments, and transcriptions produced by other tools in the vast ecosystem of cultural heritage image repositories.

The promise of interoperability between image repositories has been partially fulfilled by the consortium of institutions involved in the International Image Interoperability Framework. Multiple institutions are making images and related content available using the IIIF APIs but, until now, no killer apps have been produced that demonstrate the enormous potential of interoperating repositories.

Stanford University Libraries have produced an open source embeddable javascript application for comparative viewing of images hosted from multiple repositories, in a variety of viewing modalities, and with a planned feature set that will take advantage of OpenAnnotation and SharedCanvas content to provide a rich and expanding user experience.

This session will provide a demonstration of the viewer, the design process behind its creation, and a brief overview of the protocols that drive it: IIIF and SharedCanvas. Discussion will focus on the current feature set, problems faced, and planned future development.

Session Leaders
Stuart Snydman, Stanford University Libraries
Benjamin Albritton, Stanford University Libraries
Tom Cramer, Stanford University Libraries
Christopher Jesudurai, Stanford University Libraries
Robert Sanderson, Los Alamos National Laboratory
Drew Winget, Stanford University Libraries

View the community reporting Google doc for this session.