Bringing IIIF to the DSpace community

Starting with version 7.1, DSpace, provides basic support for IIIF out of box. This result was achieved thanks to the joint work of Willamette University and 4Science.

Now the DSpace 7 IIIF support allows institutions to upload images in DSpace, getting automatically a IIIF manifest for the item, based on item and bitstream (images) level metadata; in this way the TOC can be easily managed. Ideally, any IIIF compliant image server can be used, although instructions and full configuration examples are provided for Cantaloupe. Experimental support for the IIIF Search API is also available and it is expected to be refined in future releases.

Implementing IIIF is a fundamental achievement in DSpace history, since it is going to promote its use in contexts such those related to digital cultural heritage management, who were hitherto reluctant to use this Digital Asset Management System, not least because of the lack of tools for digital images management, navigation and sharing.

The presentation will introduce the available features, the architecture, the tools and strategies that can help institutions to deal with large collections using bulk imports.