Gain richer access to the world's image and audio/visual files

IIIF is a set of open standards for delivering high-quality, attributed digital objects online at scale. It’s also an international community developing and implementing the IIIF APIs. IIIF is backed by a consortium of leading cultural institutions.

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Break down silos with open APIs

Many of the images and audio/visual resources that are fundamental to research exist in silos, with access restricted to locally-built applications. IIIF gives you and your audience freedom to work across barriers.

Simplify and enhance your work

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Great for researchers

Examine, compare, annotate, and share. IIIF enables easy use across repositories, with tools to aid research and presentation.

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Efficient for developers

Publish once, reuse often. IIIF serves high-quality digital objects to your own site and others in many formats, without vendor lock-in.

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Practical for leaders

Share your collections as widely as possible. IIIF is a cost-effective way to serve billions of digital objects with open-source, community-driven ethics.

Why IIIF

Start building

The six IIIF APIs fit together to deliver endless possibilities.

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Image API

Retrieves images from anywhere in the world and allows the user to select an area of the image and to resize, rotate, and edit the quality.

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Presentation API

Packages each image with its metadata so users know the origin, title of the image, and even what page of a book the image was from.

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Authorization Flow API

Control and restrict access by creating a link to a user interface for logging in and services that provide credentials.

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Content Search API

Perform search for text within or annotations related to digital objects.

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Change Discovery API

Harvest any changes published by organizations that deliver digital objects.

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Content State API

Generate a very specific link to a particular view of an object, like a specific area on a particular page rotated at a certain angle.

Join the community

IIIF community groups tackle a range of topics, from implementing IIIF for specific communities to crafting new technical specifications.

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Funded by global technology leaders

IIIF is funded by a 67-member global consortium, and leveraged by aggregators, research institutions, national libraries, archives, museums, software companies, and digital agencies around the world. Consortium members include:

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Latest news

Registration Now Open - 2024 IIIF Annual Conference

    |   IIIF-C Staff

Registration is now open for the 2024 IIIF Annual Conference

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IIIF World Training

    |   IIIF-C Staff

Throughout March and April 2024, the IIIF Consortium will host a series of free online training sessions, delivered in several languages.

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