IIIF for Educators

Collecting Objects of Inquiry in Three Digital Collections

click to copy lesson html Students are introduced to the practice of "Ekphrasis" to practice "reading" an image/photograph.

Collecting Objects of Inquiry in Three Digital Collections

💡 Concept

Blackleg Vaccine Kit

“Collecting” is conceived broadly as an interdisciplinary approach to historical and current practices of acquiring, holding, organizing, and using objects and information for the purposes of cultural heritage and knowledge production. As such it is as inclusive of data and digital phenomena as it is of specimens and artifacts. And while the purview of study will include amateur, individual, and private collecting as hobby, it will address more centrally the role that collecting within institutional settings (i.e. the “G.L.A.M. sector: galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) has performed in selectively holding and preserving evidence of human experience.

🖥️ Activity

In the previous Lab Activity, you have learned how to browse the Wellcome Collection and about digital collections, this activity is to search and source three digital collections for the items as part of your project. These digital collections include the one at the Library of Congress, the Wellcome Collection, and the Smithsonian's Collections. After the demonstration of each site, you will work with your group, first, to set up the parameters (format, subject, and others, as seen in the categories of metadata). Next, you will exercise some searching strategies. Finally, with each individual's particular interests, each of you will choose 2 different items from each site (6 items in total) as the candidates to be include in your group project pertaining to the subject of our course.

Parameters

Parameters are different types of the information are the basic categories of metadata associated with any collected item in a collection. For instance, when you are on the homepage of the Smithsonian's Collections (SC), let's put "vaccine" in the search bar, and then you'll see different types of information on the left side of the page that can be refined ("Filter Results"): Topic, Date, Resource Type, and so on. These are the places where you can set up your parameters for searching. Click on each, and see what is in them. Each site of digital collections has similar and different parameters. When going through each digital collection, discuss with your group members, what parameters you would set up and why.

Search Strategies

About the Subjects

How do you decide which subjects that you will include in the search? You know it has be something related to immunity, vaccine, and so on. After understanding what this course subject is about, can you think about different words or phrase? Brainstorm with your group members. The results of your discussion would form the basis of your searching strategies. (You can use the mind map of "The Meanings of Vaccines" in Lucid board as one of the references.)

"Wildcard"

In the information studies, a wildcard character is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character, such as an asterisk (*), which can be interpreted as any literal characters or an empty string. It is useful in search.

On the homepage of the Smithsonian's Collections (SC), you can put a keyword on the search bar on top of the page. If you search "vaccin*", there are 22,960 items as "Collection Images" available online as you see in the search returns. And then you can refine/filter the result by adding other filters, for instance, choosing "Vaccines" in Topic, and then you narrow down to 148 items. You can choose more than one filter to refine your search. The results of these items could also a good parameter of subjects for you to work on.

Digital Content

Here are some criteria pointing what type of media/image/digital content you are looking for. Your items have to satisfy all these following three criteria:

  • Reputable institutions: Here are the reputable institutions that hold relevant digital contents: Library of Congress Digital Collections (LoC), Wellcome Collection (WC), and Smithsonian's Collections (SC).
  • Linked digital content (i.e. media/images and metadata) from the original source. For instance, when you look at a source from one of above site, it is usually the case that that particular institution has the right to have the authoritative scan of the original work. When you import the media by using image URL, which is stable and often permanent. In other words, you are able to acquire the digital content by linking with its URL and not just by downloading it directly into your device.
  • IIIF

    IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) is a standard that institutions can follow to present their digital materials in a way that is high quality and "interoperable" (i.e. the same image can be viewed in different digital environments). The principle of interoperability enables content to be sourced and used in combination with materials derived from other participating institutions around the world. 

    All of these institutions that provide IIIF content indicate it with a small IIIF icon that looks like this:  IIIF (triple eye eff) logo, which stands for International Image Interoperability Framework. Clicking the icon will load the object in its own viewer. The links provided above serve as web addresses of "manifests" for each item. Do not be alarmed if you click such a link and find yourself staring at a screen of indecipherable code! (that code is the manifest, a list of items and related information).

📍 Location

✉️ Share

1. Working with your group, set up your parameters. Write down what they are: what keywords and which strategies (subject driven or wildcard) that your group employ. Write down the number of items in this set as the result of your set-up parameters.
2. Next, select items. For each student, within this set of your group decision, choose 2 items from each of these three Digital Collections (6 items in total) that seem the most interesting to you. Follow the instructions in the section of "Steps" and make notes of the Titles, Page URLs, and IIIF Image URLs of these items in the Columns E-V in  "Course Spreadsheet_SOC GEN 105B_Summer 2024." For example:
3. All the group members look at all the items (including the images and their metadata) collected within the group, and discuss with each other and find out the common themes among many or some items. The theme could be about subject matter, artistic style, same author, elements, and so forth. Write down those themes and specify which theme is related to which items.
4. Write down the tentative group project theme(s) in Column D of the Course Spreadsheet.
5. Write a group post to indicate the information in 1 and 3. Identify the group number and participating members' name in the post.

🪜 Steps

Here is the instruction of how to navigate the three digital collections and find a IIIF Image URL of an item:

Library of Congress (LoC)

  1. Go to the site of Library of Congress Digital Collections (LoC). You see there are 225 Digital Collections at LoC.
  2. In order to narrow down to the collections where there are possible items pertaining to our course subject, you can go to the possible "Topic" you see on the left side of the page.
  3. For instance, click on "World Cultures & History" under "Topic," it takes you to see 153 digital collections. Read the summary under each collection, and choose a possible collection that might have something you are looking for.
  4. Taking "World Digital Library" as an example, put "vaccin*" in the search bar of "This Collection" on the top of the page. There are 45 items in the result.
  5. Click on the first item, titled "A Health Team during an Anti-Typhus Campaign, Porland." You will see the page that has the image on the top and the metadata below. Read through the metadata and see if you are interested in this item.
  6. If you would like to include this item in your selection, go down the metadata and see "IIIF Presentation Manifest." Click on "Manifest(JSON/LD)."It will take you to a page that has codes in. This is the IIIF Manifest URL of the image. You just need to copy the URL of this page on the top in the browser: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670927/manifest.json
  7. You will also copy down this IIIF Manifest URL in the Course Spreadsheet. 
  8. And go to the "Tools" section below, and past this Manifest URL in the first gray empty bar (" Enter the URL of a IIIF Manifest"), and Submit.
  9. Click the thumbnail appeared below the second gray box. And you will see the IIIF Image URL appeared in the second gray box: https://tile.loc.gov/image-services/iiif/service:gdc:gdcwdl:wd:l_:17:34:6:wdl_17346:028ny_04155_dm1/full/full/0/default.jpg
  10. Meanwhile, you will see the image appeared in the viewer on the right, where you can zoom in and out to see the image.
  11. Put this IIIF Image URL in the Course Spreadsheet.
  12. Now you can review all of the information of this item and in the Course Spreadsheet:

Wellcome Collection (WC)

  1. Go to the site of Wellcome Collection (WC).
  2. Put a key word into the search bar. For instance, vaccin* before clicking on "Search."
  3. The next page takes you to 5,433 results/items in the catalogue. Click "Images" under the search bar. It narrows down 739 results.
  4. Within these 739 results, choose "Oldest to newest" to view. You can also filter by clicking the categories (Colours, Dates, Subjects, and so on).
  5. For instance, choose the fourth item from the left in the first row, and click on "View Image." It will take the item ("A corpulent woman provides the pustule for the vaccination of a child by a couple of dandified doctors") to a viewer (Page URL): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/keymucnb/images?id=zuzm3k3c
  6. In this viewer, you can zoom in and out to see the image.
  7. Click "Downloads" at the upper right corner, and then choose "This image (Full size)."
  8. It will open the image in another tab. The URL on top is the IIIF Image URL of this item: https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/V0011688/full/full/0/default.jpg
  9. Now you have all of the information of this item and put them in the Course Spreadsheet:

Smithsonian's Collections (SC)

  1. Go to the site of  Smithsonian's Collections (SC).
  2. Enter a key word into the search bar. For instance, vaccin* before searching.
  3. There are 22,960 items as "Collection Images" available online as you see in the search returns. And then you can refine/filter the result by adding other filters, for instance, choosing "Vaccines" in Topic, and then click on "Update Search." Now you narrow down to 148 items. You can choose more than one filter to refine your search.
  4. If you choose the first item, "Freeze Dried Small Pox Vaccine - Vaccine Institute, Belgaum," it takes you to a page that you will see the image on the left side and the metadata on the right.
  5. Go down to the page (where you get the Page URL), and you will see a IIIF icon. Click on it and choose "View manifest."
  6. The page will open in another tab, and there are codes in this page. You just need to copy the Manifest URL of this image on the top: https://ids.si.edu/ids/manifest/NMAH-AHB2013q070694 and put it in the Course Spreadsheet.
  7. And go to the "Tools" section below, and past this Manifest URL in the first gray empty bar (" Enter the URL of a IIIF Manifest"), and Submit.
  8. Click the thumbnail appeared below the second gray box. And you will see the IIIF Image URL appeared in the second gray box: https://ids.si.edu/ids/iiif/NMAH-AHB2013q070694/full/full/0/default.jpg
  9. Meanwhile, you will see the image appeared in the viewer on the right, where you can zoom in and out to see the image.
  10. Now you have all of the information of this item and put them in the Course Spreadsheet:

🛠️ Tools

 

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