Conference Agenda

Interactive 2D materials are often some of the most fragile and complex items in special collections. They present unique challenges for users, conservators, developers, and curators, and are often inaccessible to users. Interactive 2D materials constitute a range of texts that include movable components that require interaction on the part of the user in order to understand the content and meaning of the text. These objects include book technologies such as volvelles, flaps, and pull tabs. Although individual institutions have created interactive digital surrogates of single texts as special projects, there is currently no standard method of creating and hosting these interactive digital surrogates. Adding further complexity to this work, there is no standard method for digitizing these objects. Developing a standard method for displaying and hosting them in their full interactivity meets a variety of the concerns that are inherent in their materiality.

Audience members will leave this presentation with an understanding of (1) user needs, (2) working group activities, (3) proposed solutions using IIIF and current activities of the working group, and (4) how to get involved in this work.

Micrio is both a subscription-based IIIIF Image Server, a low-code storytelling dashboard for said images, and an - as of recent - open source IIIF Image Viewer. It serves an eclectic roster of users. Museums deploy it to bring collections to life online. NGOs use it to document and communicate complex visual stories. Broadcasters return to it for interactive specials. E-commerce clients leverage it for product exploration that goes beyond the standard zoom-and-pan. The common thread is a need to make large, detailed images not just viewable, but explorable — to transform passive viewing into active discovery. In this presentation, we will walk through Micrio's evolution with candour about our missteps and modest pride in our successes. We will demonstrate key features, share implementation stories from partner projects, and discuss what we have learned about building sustainable tools at the intersection of technology and cultural storytelling.

This paper reflects on digital methods developed through work on The Chymistry of Isaac Newton project, with particular attention to the integration of IIIF-served manuscript images, TEI-encoded transcriptions, and AI-assisted watermark detection.

Image annotation is a powerful method for cultural institutions to document, interpret, and activate their collections. Contemporary curatorial and research use cases require a sophisticated and flexible framework for implementing layers of annotations configured for diverse objectives and audiences.

Glycerine provides a workbench for curators, researchers, and community cohorts to collaborate within a framework that supports integration with institutional infrastructure. Annotation Sets provide the capability to manage layers of annotations for different audiences. Annotation Templates provide the capability to define configurable sets of fields (text, dates, controlled vocabularies, rich text and media) and apply them across Annotation Sets or to individual annotations. Permutations of Annotation Sets and Templates support the implementation and publishing of any number of distinct presentations from the same manifest.

In addition to a sophisticated gallery implementation, we will also present Glycerine Aksara, a custom implementation that publishes digital editions of manuscripts and inscriptions. AI-assisted workflows support segmenting manuscripts at a character level. Glycerine Aksara implements grouping and linking to support the annotation of words, lines and full editions up through scale. The presentation will outline the IIIF standards utilised and the integration of AI to support editing workflows and the generation of synthetic research studies.