Collections - create & browse

[glenrobson]

From the EuropeanaTech IIIF workshop

IIIF Presentation API has the notion of 'collection' to group manifest

• Wellcome had newspapers titles as IIIF Collections

Use cases:

• Collections like newspapers
• Exhibits with metadata
• We have research project creating collections
• We want users to experience the collection.
• More adhoc groupings of collections. Export of a group that could be loading in Mirador.
• Collections could be in hierarchies
• We wanted to make exhibitions of Europeana items. Using Omeka. Needed lists of Europeana IDs.

Challenge/opportunity is small vs big collections (big = All stuff from BL)

Requirements:

• We need a tool to create collections.
• Help users to explore the collection.
• Tools to re-engage communities, help them navigate through big collections.

Notes:

• There is a difference between collections and exhibitions - (publisher collections as opposed to user created exhibition collections)
• We need collection-level descriptions
• In Europeana, there are different types: small personal galleries, CHI-curated collections, researcher-generated sets,
• Types of collections (e.g. ordered collections) could go with specific (ordered) display.
• Being able to jump to a specific part of a manifest as illustration. Could use the Content State API.
• Recipes showing hierarchical collections with metadata, linking to viewer that shows the magic of it

Is there a component that could display collection metadata while exploring the items in the collection.

Emergent needs / summary of our discussion - collections present a group of related items; with information on why they’ve been collected (e.g. user-generated; researcher data; historical collection); display attributes like a featured (part of) image and the ability to order manifests within the collection. Should allow searching within the collection across metadata in manifests. Add information to items manifests rather than rely on hierarchy of inherited data. Collections can contain collections. Uses existing IIIF functions where possible. Could be a component within IIIF Commons. A lightweight MVP collection display could be the best way to surface tensions, different ideas; spectrum from exhibitions to collections.

Potenerially two different types of software:

• Compononet to help end users create collections
• Way to browse or create an exhibition from a IIIF collection

[stephenwf]

exhibition collections

I don't think the IIIF Collection model has enough to fully author Exhibitions. Derived IIIF Manifests (taking Image Services from other Manifests) or Annotation Pages (where targets can contain specific pieces of referenceable IIIF Canvases + Manifests) feel like a better fit, if the Annotation Page was modelled like a list of Content State annotations.

[aisaac]

Yes one of the ideas is precisely to see if at some point the collection-level metadata could be extended to meet the identified requirements. At least for presentation purposes. The idea being not to propose a full model for exhibition, or for fully-fledged finding aid (from the archive context)

[glenrobson]

Note there is a session at the 2024 IIIF conference on collections: https://iiif.io/event/2024/los-angeles/schedule/#130

[aisaac]

This issue raised by @altomator may be relevant as a requirement for collection browsers: IIIF/api#2233 . This use of the start attribute is specified in the Presentation API but apparently it has been overlooked in some implementations.

[aisaac]

Other relevant pointers from @altomator :

• IIIF collections to represent search results at Biblissima: https://doc.biblissima.fr/iiif/introduction-iiif/#exemples-2
• Vikus collection viewer: https://www.raramagnetica.de/vikus/vismag/