The National Library of Wales joins the IIIF-C
20.12.2017
The National Library of Wales is delighted to be joining the prestigious International Image Interoperability Framework Consortium (IIIF-C) as a founding member.
The Library has been one of the early adopters of this groundbreaking standard and (as a member) will now join a select group of world-leading institutions.
The IIIF Framework is being widely adopted by cultural institutions for the hosting, viewing, annotation and sharing of digitised images.
IIIF standardises the delivery of images from different institutions, allowing users of collections:
- 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
The Library’s innovative use of the IIIF standard so far includes the groundbreaking Welsh Newspapers online project (newspapers.library.wales) to digitise 1.1. million newspaper pages and also the Cynefin project, a crowd-sourcing, georeferencing project which allowed the public to enrich the tithe maps of Wales created the 1800s.
Becoming a founder member of the IIIF-C supports the National Library of Wales’ new strategic plan for 2017-2021 The Nation’s Memory: Informing the Future in which the Library outlines its ambitious vision to double the number of digital items available to the public to 10 million by 2021.
The Library will be working with other cultural heritage and research organisations who are also founding members including Stanford University Libraries, the Bodleian Libraries at University of Oxford, the Wellcome Trust, the National Library of Scotland and the British Library.
Linda Tomos, Chief Executive and Librarian said:
“The National Library of Wales is delighted to be joining the IIIF-Consortium as a founder member. Becoming a member of the consortium underlines our commitment to sharing our wonderful collections with the people of Wales and beyond and working partnership to deliver the best possible service to our users. The Library has been a leader in this field for a number of years and we look forward to collaborating with others to build on our success in our use of the IIIF standard.”
Further Information
Elin-Hâf 01970 632471 or post@llgc.org.uk