IIIF, Web Annotation, and Numismatics

The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) is a community-driven open specification  for image APIs and metadata. Initially developed by university libraries for publication of high resolution images of Special Collections materials, it has been adopted by numerous Nomisma.org partners, including the American Numismatic Society, the KENOM project, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Harvard Art Museums, and others. The implementation of IIIF within the Nomisma data model enables zooming of high resolution images in Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE) and similar type corpus projects. It also allows "packaging" of all relevant images pertaining to a single coin type, which will also facilitate the annotation of monograms, symbols, and iconographic motifs (by linking to relevant URIs), paving the way to new modes of inquiry and coin description. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the specification, its current use cases in OCRE, and the potentials for standardized annotation.