Thinking through the implications of treating the IIIF canvas as a resource in itself, not just as an internal building block of a IIIF Manifest. Presented at the Fall 2020 IIIF Working group on December 2nd.

1. Canvases as First Class Citizens
David Newbury, Head of Software, Getty
IIIF Working Session, Fall 2020
1

2. Background
The Getty is a multifaceted institution, but all of our
facets create and use images. We're:
— A Museum
— A Library
— An Archive
— A Publisher
— A Website
— A Conservator
2

3. Some facets deal with objects.
All of them deal with images.
3

4. Often the same image.
4

5. Getty is all-in on IIIF.
This means that we're
running into interesting
edge cases.
5

6. Everything I want to talk
about is possible in the spec.
It's a question of practice.
6

7. 7

8. Manifests are proxies
for objects
Canvases are proxies
for views
8

9. A Book
The sequence of images is a proxy for the book.
9

10. A Painting
The "main" image can be a proxy, other images are
o!en documentation.
10

11. A Sculpture
Images are different representations of the object.
11

12. An Archival Folder
Images are proxies for the contents of a folder, but are
not a proxy for the objects within the folder.
12

13. Publication comp. figures
An aggregation of images that
are conceptually related
13

14. Search results
Images are proxies for web
pages that describe objects.
14

15. A Image Carousel
A carousel is a presentation of images that are
conceptually related, but not a proxy for a "real" object.
15

16. A website hero
A image that is not a proxy for any object: editorial
content.
16

17. Novel Experiences
Images used as "just images" or as collections of pixels.
17

18. IIIF can be used in all of these
use cases.
18

19. Manifests make sense for
some of these contexts.
19

20. We have the Image API and
the Presentation API.
20

21. The problem is annotations.
21

22. The problem is annotations
and reuse.
22

23. Observation #1
Manifests are o!en transient presentations:
objects presented in a specific context.
23

24. Shopping Cart interface
Use case: Select and order a
series of images for download
or view.
Manifests fit this role nicely—
but should include (some of?)
the annotations associated with
those images.
24

25. What we've heard is a desire
to collect images, not objects.
25

26. Observation #2
A given image may appear in many contexts, and may
be part of many objects—either "real" or "contextual".
Annotations (particularly computationally-generated
annotations) are o!en about the image, not the object.
26

27. 27

28. 28

29. Observation #3
Metadata is o!en related to the "View", and varies
across images within the context of an "Object"
— Visual description
— Photography Credit
— Alt Text
29

30. Observation #4
Some annotations are related to the image-in-context,
and other are intrinsic to the image-as-content.
— OCR
— Conservation Reporting
— CV Tagging
30

31. Canvases are a conceptual
space that contains
annotations that present a
specific collection of content.
31

32. My Questions:
How do we handle interactions with images +
annotations, not just manifests-as-object-proxies?
What's intrinsic to the object and what's to the image
or view?
Does a canvas change impacts several manifests?
Should we think about the Canvas a first-class resource
within the IIIF environment?
32

33. How do we manage this?:
— From an authorship perspective?
— From a technical perspective?
— From a UX perspective?
33

34. Discussion!
34