The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) is pleased to announce that we have joined the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) Consortium as an associate member.
IIIF is a set of standards for delivering online high-quality images and audio files at large scale. These standards are open and enable interoperability among digital platforms and collections.
CRKN is implementing IIIF to improve the Canadiana platform’s functionality. Through IIIF, CRKN can benefit from state of the art open-source software solutions instead of using our own custom code for the Canadiana infrastructure. We will utilize a widely adopted, pre-existing, standardized IIIF API framework to streamline our work and seamlessly integrate with other open infrastructures as we continue to develop. By becoming an associate member, CRKN joins a community of GLAM institutions in implementing and helping to shape these vital open standards.
“CRKN is delighted to join the IIIF consortium as an associate member,” said Clare Appavoo, CRKN’s Executive Director. “Implementing IIIF as the key technical foundation of our Canadiana infrastructure has been central to our plans to evolve into open, interoperable infrastructure that supports cutting-edge research on Canada’s history.”
As we work to evolve the Canadiana infrastructure, CRKN is working on introducing the open source Mirador Viewer to our Canadiana portals, which will pull image content directly from the underlying Canadiana infrastructure using new IIIF functionality. Mirador is a popular item viewer, already widely used across Canada and the globe. We are also launching a stand-alone IIIF Presentation API to improve load times across our system. Our future development plans will include implementing the IIIF Content Search API to provide search term highlighting in our document viewer.
CRKN is excited to join the IIIF member community and looking forward to further IIIF implementation as we transform the Canadiana infrastructure.
For more information, please contact Mélanie Plante, Communications Coordinator, at mplante@crkn.ca.