Introducing-IIIF

Access the world's highest quality, re-usable images of cultural heritage

Cultural heritage institutions that deliver freely licensed access to their digital collections using IIIF are listed on the IIIF website. The list includes major museums and galleries, state and national libraries, and research-led universities from around the world. The number of cultural heritage items made available via IIIF is estimated at 1 billion.

Exercise: Finding and opening a IIIF object in Universal Viewer

Go to the list of institutions that support IIIF on the IIIF website. Choose an institution's collections to explore - clicking on their name will lead you to a page that provides a link to their digital collections platform, and a screenshot showing where to find the manifest.

Manifests are the key to unlocking IIIF items for re-use. They look like this:

  • example
  • example
  • example

Manifests look a bit like links, but they're more like parcels. Rather than push a user to the location of a digital object on the web, a manifest packages everything a computer needs to know in order for that user to pull the digital object into their current location. The package contains:

  • links to all the images belonging to a digital object
  • structural metadata - instructions on how to organise and present the images
  • descriptive metadata - the title, author, date, location of the physical object

A manifest stores this information as json code - if you click on a manifest, or paste it into a browser's address bar, you can see it - but don't worry, you don't need to understand it! All you need to do is copy the manifest, and paste it into a IIIF viewer or tool in order for the object to render.

Every institution's digital collections platform presents information about its objects, manifests slightly differently, and some are easier to find than others. Some example screenshots:

Library of Congress
Smithsonian
Cambridge University
University of St Andrews

Follow the link to your chosen institution's digital collections platform, and run a search.

Choose a result, and use the screenshot on the IIIF website to help locate the manifest. Sometimes, it's attached to the IIIF logo, or it might be in the catalogue record. When you find it, right click to copy the manifest.

Some institutions' digital collections are easier to navigate than others! If you get stuck, copy one of the example manifests above.

When you've copied a manifest, go to Universal Viewer, and scroll down the page to find a box where you can paste your manifest. Click 'View' - your digital object should open, and allow you to zoom in, pan around, and examine the item in detail.