A series of IIIF events in Japan the week of October 16-20, 2017 provided forums for sharing and learning about IIIF and related activities at multiple Japanese cultural heritage institutions in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Fukuoka. Delegates from the IIIF community included, from Stanford University, Michael Keller, Chair of the IIIF Consortium (IIIF-C) Executive Committee; Tom Cramer, Chair of the IIIF-C Coordinating Committee; Stuart Snydman, Assistant Director of Digital Libraries Services; software developer Jack Reed; and Dr. Regan Murphy Kao, Head of East Asia Library Special Collections and Curator of Japanese Collections, as well as Michael Appleby from the Yale Center for British Art; Paola Manoni from the Vatican Library; and Sheila Rabun, IIIF Community and Communications Officer.
The five-day tour included the following events:
Monday, October 16: IIIF Japan Tokyo Round Table
Participants from the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University Library Network, Keio University, Doshisha University, National Institute for Japanese Literature, NTT Data, the National Diet Library, the National Institute of Informatics, the Center for Open Data in the Humanities, the British Museum, Stanford University, Yale Center for British Art, and the IIIF Consortium discussed current status and new advancements in the IIIF APIs, IIIF software, possibilities for IIIF and DH, and outreach ideas for IIIF activities in Japan and the wider community.
Tuesday, October 17: IIIF Japan Symposium
Symposium at the National Institute of Informatics in Tokyo, featuring an introductory lecture by IIIF representatives, followed by talks from:
- Chifumi Nishioka, Kyoto University Digital Library
- Paola Manoni & Hiroshi Sugino, IIIF and Digital Vaticana
- Shin Irie, Keio University Digital Collection
- Kazuhiro Okada, NIJL Database for Pre-Modern Japanese Works
- Kiyonori Nagasaki, University of Tokyo, SAT Daizōkyō Image Database
- Masahide Kanzaki, How to cook a IIIF manifest
- Asanobu Kitamoto, IIIF Curation Viewer
- Hisayoshi Harada, IIIF and National Diet Library
- Takeshi Mizutani, Image sharing in National Art Museums in Japan
- Satoshi Tarashima, A Potential for Reconstruction of Scattered Old Books (Tokyo National Museum)
Wednesday, October 18: Kyoto University Library IIIF Seminar
Seminar at the Kyoto University Library, featuring a keynote by IIIF representatives and talks from:
- Kiyonori Nagasaki (Visiting researcher, Humanities and Information Science Center, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Tokyo)
- Prof. Susumu Hayashi (Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University)
- Chifumi Nishioka (Kyoto University Library Research and Development Office)
Thursday, October 19: IIIF Japan Kyoto Round Table
Meeting at the Ritsumeikan University Art Research Center (ARC) in Kyoto, focusing on digital archive and web publishing projects at the ARC in relation to IIIF, concerning collections of photographs, woodcut prints, moving objects, and 3D objects.
Friday, October 20: IIIF Workshop
Workshop for librarians and graduate students at the Kyushu University Library in Fukuoka, featuring an introduction to IIIF followed by a hands-on IIIF workshop led by Dr. Kiyonori Nagasaki, where participants were introduced to the IIIF Curation Viewer and Omeka IIIF Toolkit with Mirador and Neatline. These tools were then used to create a collaborative map of interesting IIIF content.
IIIF adoption in Japan:
- IIIF Curation Viewer, developed by the Center for Open Data in the Humanities
- University of Tokyo SAT Daizōkyō Image Database
- Kyoto University Library Network Rare Materials Digital Archive
- Keio University Digital Collections
- National Institute of Japanese Literature Database of Pre-Modern Japanese Works