The University of Edinburgh has joined the International Image Interoperability Framework Consortium (IIIF) as Founding Members. On Tuesday 26th April, the formal agreement was signed between Gavin McLachlan, Chief Information Officer and Librarian to the University, and Michael Keller, University Librarian, Stanford University. Other founding members include: Stanford University, Cornell University, Wikipedia, Oxford University, British Library, and Wellcome Trust. Membership of IIIF was made possible through the Information Services Innovation Fund.

Mike Keller, the Stanford University Librarian signing the IIIF agreement with Gavin McLachlan and Jeremy Upton in the Treasures Viewing Room, 26th April 2016

IIIF is being widely adopted by University and National Libraries as a framework for the hosting, viewing, annotation and sharing of digitised images. Within the University’s Library and University Collections Division we are adopting IIIF for the delivery of our digitised rare and unique items.

IIIF standardises the delivery of images from different institutions, this allows all users of our collections to:

• Compare images from different institutions side by side
• Recreate collections/items that have been split up and are now housed in different institutions
• Create new collections consisting of items at different institutions
• Cite specific areas of images
• Embed images within blogs and websites
• Annotate images for teaching and research

We have already been engaging with the IIIF community through attending a technical workshop and community event. This has informed our investigations into IIIF servers and tools. We will also be attending the IIIF Conference in New York next week, where Claire Knowles will be discussing annotation, during a panel on future trends in IIIF.

“Adopting IIIF will enable the University’s rich and unique image collections to be utilised by our global audience for new and exciting areas of research and learning.  In addition, other features of IIIF such as deep zooming will allow the collections to be enjoyed and explored in great depth.  Joining the IIIF consortium as a Founding Member allows the University of Edinburgh to work with other world-leading institutions to support the growth and adoption of this standard.” Jeremy Upton, Library and University Collections Director

You can learn more about IIIF at http://iiif.io/

Claire Knowles and Stuart Lewis