IIIF Interactive 2D Community Group

About

The Interactive 2D Community Group is focused on exploring ways of using IIIF to create and maintain interactive digital surrogates of texts. Book technologies such as flaps, volvelles, and pull tabs require specific forms of user interaction to create and transmit meaning. In use globally since at least the medieval period, interactive book technologies appear across text genres, from medical and scientific texts to advertising ephemera and satirical prints. Although videos and still photographs can be used to communicate some of this information, the lack of personal engagement with the materiality of the object inhibits meaning creation and transmission of information. Since the main research value for these objects lies in the interaction with specific “flat” parts (ex. Flaps) that embody specific, prescribed movement (as opposed to 3D physicality), we hope to grow IIIF to allow for prescribed user interactions with 2D captures while still leveraging well-known benefits of IIIF such as deep zoom and wide-scale resource sharing. The group prioritizes 2D image capture for these materials in order to increase accessibility to them for both user access and in support of institutional resource capacity. Some institutions have expressed that they do not have, nor anticipate ever having, 3D capture and/or access capabilities. Additionally, this will allow institutions to modify existing 2D captures to allow for interactivity.

The full charter can be found here.

Goals

  • Create a common vocabulary for interactive text components to ensure common understanding of book technologies among interdisciplinary stakeholders. User groups that engage with interactive materials, such as scholars, cataloguers, and digitization professionals, have diverse ways of describing interactive movements. Having a common vocabulary for the specific purposes of digitization and development of interactive digital surrogates will create a critical pathway for these stakeholders to communicate how materials should be digitized, made interactive, and hosted online.
    • For example, some catalogs may refer to a movable book component as a “hidden picture,” which does not provide sufficient meaning for the purposes of digitization and display. Standardizing terms like “hinge” or “flap” will better indicate the specific movements that should be captured.
  • Gather user needs for IIIF community members to consider when seeking to introduce interaction and/or movable objects in their digital collections. Surveying different user groups, such as scholars doing research, instructors teaching courses, professionals performing digital capture, and curators developing exhibits, will inform the range of interactions that are most critical to have available in interactive digital surrogates.
    • There are many scholars whose research intersects with movable texts. For example, Dr. Jessica Dandona is a scholar of 19th-century print culture and a flap anatomy expert. Dr. Suzanne Karr Schmidt is the George Amos Poole III Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts at the Newberry and President of the Movable Book Society. Karr Schmidt curated a wildly popular exhibit at the Newberry about movable books in 2023 called “Pop-Up Books through the Ages.” The Journal of Interactive Books is a scholarly journal devoted to exploring the history of these types of texts.
  • Develop use cases for movable books / interactive objects and identify gaps in current IIIF specifications as they pertain to these materials.
    • For example, IIIF currently enables the presentation of order, layout, aspect ratio, and continuity for resources, but does not have a prescription for how to interact with the resource in front of you. A flap anatomy requires a specific interaction – a flap opening on a single hinge that reveals internal organs beneath – for a user to derive meaning from the object.
  • Promote IIIF within broader access, teaching, and research communities. The necessity of interdisciplinary problem-solving for interactive 2D materials provides an opportunity for broadening engagement in IIIF communities among scholars and instructors in higher education, as well as contemporary artists making interactive prints, artist books, and other interactive art.
    • Teaching with movable books is challenging because they are too fragile. Although some scholars and librarians have found success with creating physical facsimiles, such as Rebecca Whiteley, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the necessity of being able to provide instruction online. Digital interactive surrogates of movable books will allow instructors at all levels to engage students whether or not they are meeting in person, and whether or not they are able to physically engage with the historical materials.

Organization

Chairs:

  • Theresa Berger, University of Minnesota Libraries
  • Emily Beck, University of Minnesota Libraries
  • Summer Shetenhelm, Yale University
  • Patrick Cuba, St. Louis University

Communication channels: