What is IIIF?

iiif – triple aye eff – is the International Image Interoperability Framework. It is an open standard to deliver high resolution images for deep zooming from galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM).

A iiif manifest contains information how to access a digitized page or an entire book at a iiif provider’s web site. It also delivers metadata on the iiif book.

– More info at iiif community home

Dedicated web tools are needed to open iiif manifests – much like Adobe Reader or the Preview app on Macintosh which both display pdf documents.
Mirador and Universal Viewer are most common. But Chronoscope World is capable to open iiif manifests as well.

Import IIIF Manifest Links

Many libraries and archives offer their collections also as iiif. Usually a link to a iiif manifest is provided on the item page.

Copy’n’Paste or Drag’n’Drop a manifest link to Chronoscope World to open the iiif page or the entire book.

On success, a table of thumbnails gives an overview of the book’s content.

Exercise

1. Open Justus Danckerts’ Atlas from 1715 at e-rara by ETH Zurich
2. Find and copy the manifest link from the lower section of the page.
3. Import the link into Chronoscope World.

Learn how to import geoLinks into Chronoscope World because iiif manifests are basically formatted text files on a iiif provider’s web server. The web address is needed to open the manifest which can contain a single image or an entire atlas or book.

Justus Danckerts’ Atlas is displayed on the table of maps.
Skip the exercise and directly open this view

Chronoscope World displays maps from more than 66 libraries, archives and museums at their correct location. But you can import any iiif manifest from any iiif provider and browse the pages.

Imported books remain available until the browser window is closed or reloaded.

However, sharing a ChronoLink to an imported iiif book is possible as the link contains a parameter for the original iiif manifest.

Mind, that usually imported pages are displayed south of Ghana at 0° latitude – 0° longitude. Only for some libraries bounding box locations are available; among them are Yale, e-rara, and e-manuscripta.

Smart Drag’n’Drop of IIIF books

Some libraries offer a more convenient way to import iiif books. Simply drag a thumbnail from a search results page onto a Chronoscope’s browser window!

See Smart Drag’n’Drop in action

The thumbnail view offers tools to copy the iiif manifest address, or to visit the library page.

Exercise

Explore the Ibero-American Institute

1) Drag a thumbnail from IAI’s Cinegraf collection…

2) …and drop the thumbnail to Chronoscope World to open the iiif book:

Use arrow keys space shift-space PageUp PageDown etc. to navigate the table of pages.
Press return to open a page

3) Open any page and flip though the book:

Use PageUp PageDown Q W or double or trippe key strokes to flip through the pages. Use A to reopen the table of pages.
Skip the exercise and directly open this view

Supported GLAMs

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) that support smart drag’n’drop for Chronoscope World:

1. Internet Archive
   –free books and movies only–
2. Museum Digital.de + Museum Digital.org
3. University of St. Andrews
4. Digital Library of Medieval Manuscripts at Johns Hopkins U, Baltimore, Maryland
5. Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Berlin
6. Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin zlb
   Also for StabiKat
7. Norman B. Leventhal Map Center, Boston
8. GEI Digital Braunschweig zlb
9. Brown University
10. MMMONK, Brugge
11. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
12. Digital Library, University of Cambridge
13. Trinity College, Cambridge
14. SMK Copenhagen
15. The Portal to Texas History, Denton, Texas
16. Athenaeumbibliotheek, Deventer
17. Doshisha University Library
18. UCD Dublin
19. The Royal Irish Academy / Digital Repository of Ireland
20. Universitätsbibliothek Düsseldorf :: example
21. Fuldaer Digitale Sammlungen
22. Folger Shakespeare Library :: example
23. Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main
24. Goethehaus-Museum, Frankfurt
25. PicturaPaedagogica, Frankfurt
26. Göttingen State and University Library
27. Harvard Art Collection
28. Universität Kassel
29. Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
30. University of Leicester – Special Collections Online
31. Wellcome Collection, London
32. UC Los Angeles
33. Fragmentarium, University of Fribourg
34. The Huntington- Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens :: Digital Libray
35. University of Manchester
36. Massachusetts Collection Online – Digital Commonwealth
37. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – Digitale Bibliothek
38. UWMilwaukee, Wisconsin
39. Münchner Digitalisierungszentrum – Digitale Bibliothek :: example | example 2
40. ULB Münsterexample
41. Digital Culure of Metropolitan New York :: examples
42. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg
43. Bodleian Libraries (Oxford) – video example | toot
44. Gallicia – Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
45. Princeton University Art Museum
46. Íslandskort.is, Reykjavík
47. e-Museum, National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan
48. ryukoku :: example | 1-2-3
49. Stanford Libraries :: video example
50. Parker Library, Stanford
51. SDSU Library, San Diego
52. Libraries of the University of Toronto :: example
53. Villanova University
54. Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar
55. Universitätsbibliothek Wien
56. manuscripta.at Wien
57. Library of Congress, Washington D.C. :: example
58. Belevedere, Wien
59. Williams College Museum of Art
60. National Gallery of Arts, Washington D.C.
61. Yale Center for British Art :: example
62. Yale University Library
63. e-rara by ETH Zürich :: video example
64. e-codices :: example
65. e-manuscripta of the Zentralbibliothek Zürich :: example

Power user tip:
It is possible to drag one iiif book after another onto the Chronoscope. The table of maps does not even have to be closed. That makes it possible to siff though dozens of books with thousands of pages quite efficiently.
This is useful if you do not know quite for sure what you are looking for. Just open a book with a drag gesture and have a glance at the thumbnails.

A few portals offer the iiif info on the search result pages. In this case it is possible to drag the iiif icon directly onto Chronoscope’s browser window with out loading the iiif book’s details page.

• biblissima

Browser Extension IIIF to CWorld

Add a context menu item for all IIIF links – anywhere: IIIF to CWorld

CWorld context menu item for links.

Browser Extension DetektIIIF

detektIIIF2 is a browser plugin for Firefox, Chrome and Brave that automatically detects IIIF‑compliant resources and thus facilitates the collection of digital iiif manifests.

detektIIIF browser extension has found two iiif manifests.

More Info

• Download and install detektIIIF

After installation, configure detektIIIF to use Chronoscope World as a IIIF Viewer.

Enter this URL at detektIIIF’s Options panel:

https://mprove.de/chrono?iiif-content=%%%URI%%%

detektIIIF Options

Cover image by Philippe Mercier CC0 Yale Center for British Art collections

About Chronoscope World

Chronoscope World is the core module of the Chrono Research Lab.

You can support Chronoscope Hamburg and Chronoscope World by sharing ChronoLinks relentlesly. Historical insights have been shared on twitter at chronohh. But meanwhile the music plays on Mastodon at Chrono Matthias

The Chrono Research Lab is an independant and free time-traveling service by Matthias Müller-Prove. However, some expenses are not really covered. Luckily, the human society has invented real money to buy me a virtual coffee:

Tip me on PayPal

Social Channels

• chronoHH@norden.social
• Chrono Research Lab
  
  

But now: Please fasten your seat belts. Let’s travel through space and time with Chronoscope World: