CDH-cookbook

Lesson: The IIIF Labyriiinth

^ Methods Fellows 2025

Using Digitised Collections: IIIF Literacy, Methods and Tools

Contents

Overview

Images have become ubiquitous in the digital age, and IIIF – the International Image Interoperability Framework – re-imagines what you can do with them, and a lot more besides.

“To understand IIIF, you have to look with your hands and think with your eyes.”
Chris Gilman (Digital Curriculum Program Coordinator, UCLA)

IIIF can be quite complex to explain, and often also to use, but some of the principles at play are strikingly simple. You don’t really need to worry too much about what IIIF means to start using it, you just need to know what you can do with it to begin understanding it. But at its most basic level, it means that you can access and, importantly, use a lot of digital content from hundreds of institutions across the world.

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Why a labyrinth?

Unlike mazes, labyrinths have a singular path to follow that might twist and turn, but the view of the whole is usually visible - You can find out more about them through the Labyrinth Society. So wherever you are you can see where you’ve been and where you are going, reinforcing a feeling of surety that you will reach the centre and safety that you will find your way out again. Labyrinths are a great way to inspire and empower you to navigate as you start your own IIIF journey, they are a reflective space ‘in the spirit of good pedagogy’ (Sellers & Moss 2016, p.9).

In the spirit of walking a traditional labyrinth, this resource aspires to go beyond simply imparting knowledge, and aims to provide a space in which to guide you as you take the first steps, but that ultimately inspires you to go out into a broader landscape so that you can continue the journey (Ingold 2015).

IIIF can be a daunting, technical and sometimes even frustrating thing to learn about that often feels like it’s advancing quicker than you can keep up. So framing a IIIF learning resource within the concept of a labyrinth hopefully balances any anxiety and creates a calming and manageable introduction that encourages you to learn more about IIIF.

The IIIF Labyriiinth is an open educational resource for introducing and teaching IIIF Literacy, Methods and Tools. It has been constructed by Andy Corrigan as part of his CDH Methods Fellowship 2025/6.

Below is an example of a labyrinth in a manuscript - if you need a reset at any point, or get stuck, try following it with you cursor or finger, and then try again.

Creating Reflective Space

Before you begin the IIIF Labyriiinth, make sure you have prepared for your journey. Along the way, you can create and use a variety of virtual spaces to save your work, and a digital journal in order to be able to record, reflect on, and share your learning journey in the IIIF Labyriiinth.

Exercise: Make a MixTape

First you might want to prepare a IIIF Mixtape for you jounrey. You can use this stash your favourite IIIF resources for later.

MixTape is a tool for creating and working with your own IIIF Collection. It was developed by Chris Gilman (UCLA), Ben Johnston (Princeton University), Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny (UCLA) and Adelmar Ramirez (Hood College).

Follow these steps:

  1. In a new browser tab, open the IIIF MixTape.
  2. Click the ‘New Collection’ button.
  3. Enter a name for your Mixtape, enter your email address and tick the T’s&C’s.
  4. Click the ‘Create Collection’ button.
  5. You will shortly recieve an email with a link to your very own IIIF Mixtape - Keep it safe!

Exercise: Start a Journal

Next, prepare your Journal. To create this, you are going to use a tool called Exhibit.

Exhibit is a tool for building engaging story-telling and learning resources with online digital collections. It was developed by Mnemoscene.

Follow these steps:

  1. In a new browser tab, go to: Exhibit.so.
  2. Fill in the form using these options:
    • Template: Select ‘Slides’
    • Title: [Your Name]’s IIIF Labyriiinth Journal
    • Author: [Your Name]
    • Description: [Add a few words - you can add more later]
    • Rights (optional): [You can leave this blank - its for licencing your Exhibit if you need to]
    • Access: Select ‘Public’ -> You can password protect if you’d rather, but make sure you remember the password!
    • Enable Landing Page: This will create a title-page for your journal.
    • Allow Duplication: You can untick this if you want.
    • I’m not a robot: Tick
    • Ts&Cs: Tick
  3. Click ‘Create Exhibit’.

Now start adding some content by picking a cover image. You can use any IIIF resource, but if you haven’t found one yet, you can use one of the examples in this MixTape of IIIF Examples from Cambridge Digital Library.
Follow these steps:

  1. In another browser tab, navigate to this MixTape of IIIF Examples.
  2. Pick one of the items that you think looks or sounds interesting. Select it by clicking on it, and then click on the ‘IIIF’ logo in the top-right of the screen.
  3. A pop-up window will show a box containing a ‘Manifest URL’, and another box with some code in it. Click the ‘Copy’ button next to the Manifest URL.
  4. Go back to your ‘Exhibit’ tab, and click ‘+ Add Item’ button.
  5. Paste the URL into the ‘Import’ box in the ‘+ Add Item’ dialogue window and click ‘Import’.
  6. You should see the item appear in a zoomable viewer on the right hand side of the screen. Find the image or page you want to use using the thumbnails.
  7. On the left-hand side of the screen, click the ‘+’ button directly under your title/description box.
  8. Type: ‘This is my front cover image.’ -> if you like, you can also add a brief sentence explaining what drew you to this image.
  9. Click the ‘tick’ button.

Great! - You can add to this as you progress, but make sure you keep a note of your Exhibit’s URL somewhere safe so that you can come back and edit it. There are several ‘Share’ options available if you click the ‘Share’ button in the bottom left of the screen.

You might have a few questions about what exactly IIIF is, so you can now take your first step and enter the IIIF Labyriiinth…

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step One: The object of Inquiry

Summary

It’s tricky to understand what IIIF is until you have a go. This step will allow you to develop this understanding and reflect on what IIIF might mean.

Learning Objective:

What Does IIIF Stand For?

First thing’s first. IIIF is pronounced “tripple-eye-eff”.

The next thing you need to know is what the IIIF ‘icon’/logo looks like:
{fig-alt=”The International Image Interoperability Framework logo”}

IIIF is an acronym for the International Image Interoperability Framework, but that’s probably the least important thing to know.

IIIF is also:

The Broad and Narrow IIIF Way

IIIF isn’t very tangible is it?

No. But everyone perceives things differently because we all see and experience different small parts of it. (Popple, 2009, Encyclopaedia of Perception) So something complex like IIIF might be best understood through collective reflection on what we experience.

‘The Broad and the Narrow Way’ is a Victorian poster that accompanied a lecture that taught a somewhat simplistic world view that human nature tended to be bad, and as a result the path to Heaven in the picture is so difficult and narrow that there are few people travelling it.

Exercise: Annotate a IIIF resource

You can use a real-time collaborative viewing and annotation tool called Liiive to explore how IIIF works.

You can do this exercise by yourself, but you can also have fun doing it with friends or colleagues by sharing the ‘room’ URL. Follow these steps:

  1. In another browser tab, navigate to liiive.now.
  2. In the ‘Paste IIIF URL’ box, insert the following: 
    https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/PR-BROADSIDES-AA-00008-00023.json
  3. Press ‘Enter’ or click the ‘Go liiive!’ button.
  4. Spend a few minutes just having a really good look and exploring what’s in the image and thinking about the various things its comprised of.
  5. Can you find:
    • A sign
    • A steam train?
    • A lion?
    • A route through which you might change paths?
    • The names of one of the people who had a role in creating it?
  6. What else can you see? In the top-right, you’ll see annotation tools with different shapes:
    • Try adding different types of annotation to the things you’ve spotted - a “rectangle”/”polygon”, an “eliptical”, or a “path”, and include a comment with what you’ve noticed.
    • When you click ‘Save’, you’ll notice your annotation is a highlighted on the image.
    • Click on an annotation you’ve added, and it will bring it up - you can add another comment by clicking the ‘Reply’ button.

What are you looking at? Is it image/text/data/code?

Journal Entry

You could add your thoughts to your journal. Go back to the Exhibit.so browser window where you started your journal and see if you can add the ‘The Broad and the Narrow Way’ IIIF resource.

Hint: Use the following URL when you click the ‘+ Add Item’ button:

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/PR-BROADSIDES-AA-00008-00023.json
  1. Click the ‘+’ button and add a comment/caption sharing some thoughts on what you think a IIIF resource is, and then click the ‘tick’ button
  2. In the image viewer, zoom-in to one of the things you spotted in the image earlier, click the ‘+’ button again, describe what it is you found, and click the ‘tick’ button.
  3. Now that you have a few ‘slides’ in your journal, it might be a good time to see what it looks like by clicking the ‘Preview’ button at the bottom of the screen.
  4. This will open a view only version of your journal in a new browser tab - go ahead and click through it.

Your Exhibit.so journal and the liiive.now annotation tool are both using the same IIIF method.

You might be wondering how it works - so it’s time to take your next step in the IIIF Labyriiinth.

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step Two: Seeing is Believing

IIIF Literacy Part 1

Summary

Think IIIF looks pretty useful? - This step will allow you to start making sense of it.

You are going to learn about the IIIF Image API, which is how to access and use an image made available through IIIF.

Learning Objective:

Theory: Image API

Think of an image as a map, and a URL as some co-ordinates on that map and instructions of how to find it.

This is an image of a page from a 1580 CE copy of a manuscript on Jain cosmology that was composed in the Prakrit language in the 14th century. Let’s say the digital image measures 1000 pixels wide by 500 pixels high.

An image of a page from a manuscript on Jain cosmology.{fig-alt=”Describe me…”}

On the page, there is a diagram of the ‘Two and a Half Continents’ (Aḍhāīdvīpa), a representation of the Jain understanding of the earthly realm. It shows lots of things you might expect to see on a map - oceans, continents, rivers and mountains.

If I just want a square region showing only this diagram, I can use IIIF to get just the section I need by thinking of the pixels as co-ordinates.

An image of a page from a manuscript on Jain cosmology.{fig-alt=”Describe me…”}

The top-left corner of the image is always (0,0) and the region is defined using the top-left (x,y) co-ordinate followed by the width and height of the region you want. So in this example, the co-ordinates for the region I want are (525,125,375,375).

But that’s not the only thing we can do. It’s also possible to use the IIIF Image API to resize and rotate the image, and request different qualities or formats. These can be numerical or sometimes use words like ‘full’ or ‘default’.

This image shows the original region, a reduction to 80%, an 80% reduction rotated 90°, and an 80% reduction rotated 180° in greyscale.

An image of a page from a manuscript on Jain cosmology.{fig-alt=”Describe me…”}

So in this case, you really can turn the world upside down! Or make it greyscale if don’t want a colourful world…

The full IIIF Image API URI syntax template looks like this:

{scheme}://{server}{/prefix}/{identifier}/{region}/{size}/{rotation}/{quality}.{format}

Exercise: Seeing in new ways

Find a IIIF image and use the IIIF Image API to display it in different ways.

Follow these steps:

  1. Find Find an image you want to use.
    • In another browser tab, navigate to this MixTape of IIIF Examples.
    • Pick one of the items that you think looks or sounds interesting. Select it by clicking on it, and then click on the Cropping Tool icon in the top-right of the screen.
    • A pop-up window will open. Select the thumbnail of the image you would like to use and it will appear in the zooming viewer window.
    • You should find the URL to that specific image in the second text-box, under which there are the following options: Large Small Actual </>
    • Select ‘Actual’ and then click the ‘Copy’ button.
    • Open a new web-browser tab and paste it into the address/URL bar and press return/enter. Your image should load.
  2. Take a close look at the URL and you might notice some familiar syntax.
  3. Play with some of these values in the URL, hit enter, and see what happens. Try changing the following:
    • Find a region you like
    • Change the size
    • Rotate the image
    • Make it grey or bitonal

Journal Entry

You could add your adjusted URL to your journal. Go back to the Exhibit.so browser window with your journal and see if you can add an entry.

  1. Go back to the MixTape of IIIF Examples.
  2. This time, select the same item you used in the Exercise above, but this time click on the ‘IIIF’ icon in the top-right of the screen.
  3. Click the ‘Copy’ button for the ‘Manifest URL’ box.
  4. Return to the Exhibit.so browser window with your journal and see if you can use the ‘+ Add Item’ button to import the item into your journal.
  5. Click the ‘+’ button and add a comment/caption. Briefly describe the changes you made to the image URL - Did you rotate it 90 degrees and reduce it to 50% for example.
  6. Look back at the browser tab with the adjusted image URL. Copy this URL and paste it into the comment/caption box with your description in.
  7. Finish this entry by then clicking the ‘tick’ button.

Top Tip! When you are adding images to your own website (eg Drupal/Wordpress), you could use the IIIF Image API to add the image/crop you want by using these URLs instead of manually cropping and uploading a new image.

However… there’s also a better way - you could embed a zooming IIIF viewer like the Universal Viewer to show ANY IIIF resource in all its glory.

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step Three: Code Breaking

Summary

IIIF might look a bit techie and a lot like code… This step in the IIIF Labyriiinth will help you experience how dealing with code isn’t as scary as it first looks.

Learning Objective:

Activity:

<iframe width="100%" height="500" src="https://tripleyefish.com/puzzle/index.html?iiif-image=https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/1339,201,4066,3678/1200,/0/default.jpg&size=187&cols=4&redirect=https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-00864/140" title="Andy's IIIF Puzzle"></iframe>
  1. Can you solve the puzzle? Clicking a piece of the puzzle will move it to the empty space. Keep moving the pieces until the image is rearranged correctly.
  2. When you complete the puzzle, the empty space will disappear, revealing the whole image
  3. Click on the image again and you be taken to the manuscript this image is from on Cambridge Digital Library.

That’s not so scary is it?

Below you can see the code that generates the puzzle. Look at each line and you might recognise the IIIF Image regions. When you clicked the image tiles in the puzzle, all that was happening was that the line of code for the tile you clicked is moved to the ‘empty’ line. So you can also complete the puzzle by copy and pasting the chunks of code.

<table cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'>
<tr>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/3371,2653,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src=""/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/3371,1427,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/1339,2653,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/1339,1427,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/4387,1427,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/4387,201,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/3371,201,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/2355,2653,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/1339,201,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/2355,201,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
    <td><img src="https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/2355,1427,1016,1226/187,/0/default.jpg"/></td>
</tr>
</table>

Exercise:

Create your own puzzle using this tool: https://www.tripleyefish.com/puzzle/builder.html It was developed by Chris Gilman (UCLA), Ben Johnston (Princeton University), Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny (UCLA) and Adelmar Ramirez (Hood College).

Use the MixTape of IIIF Examples to find another image you want to use, and the ‘Cropping Tool’ to pick a region and get your IIIF Image URL.

Or you can just use the same one as above:

https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-ADD-00864-000-00140.jp2/1339,201,4066,3678/1200,/0/default.jpg

You can adjust the number of colllums and tile/puzzle widths.

You can switch between looking at the code, and seeing the image tiles.

How do you feel about code now?

Journal Entry

See if you can add some thoughts to your journal. Can you remember how? Look back over your steps in the IIIF Labyriiinth if you need a reminder.

  1. In your Exhibit.so browser tab, import the item you made a puzzle of.
  2. Create a comment/caption. Share a brief reflection about how you’re feeling about code.
  3. Look back at the browser tab with your puzzle in it. Click the ‘Hyperlink Icon’ button and paste the URL into you journal entry so you can come back and play your puzzle.
  4. Finish this entry by then clicking the ‘tick’ button.

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step Four: Comparing the right tool for the job

Summary

IIIF provides new ways of looking at things, and there are a number of different tools for doing so.

Learning Objective:

Side-by-Side

The Mirador Viewer can display multiple IIIF resources in a single viewing platfrom.

<iframe width="100%" height="500" src="https://projectmirador.org/demo/" title="Mirador Viewer Demo"></iframe>

Spend a few minutes exploring the viewer and what the different buttons do.

Now try to add and display the following two resources to the Mirador Viewer:

  1. ʻAjāʼib al-makhlūqāt (MS Nn.3.74) 
    https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/MS-NN-00003-00074

Turn thumbnail strip on and find the page labeled ‘13r’.

  1. Nuremberg Chronicle (Inc.0.A.7.2[888]) 
    https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/PR-INC-00000-A-00007-00002-00888

Turn thumbnail strip on and find the page labeled ‘5v’.

Spend a few minutes exploring the two resources and see if you can identify one similarity and one difference.

Journal Entry

See if you can also import the two items into your journal. You might need several entries for each item this time. After importing each complete image and adding the title as a comment/caption, try zooming in to the areas of the images where you spotted similarities or differences and describe those as comments/captions. In Exhibit.so you can drag and drop your completed comment/caption entries into a different order, so you can play around with the order of these ones to create a narrative of your discoveries.

Layers

The Compariscope, built by the V&A Museum, allows you to create interactive layered images.

<iframe width="100%" height="600" src="https://vanda.github.io/iiif-features/compariscope.html?manifest=img/" title="The V&A Compariscope"></iframe>

Copy and paste the following three image URLs into the box and click the ‘+’ button after each.

https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-VANNECK-BOX-00005-A-FOLIO-00001-000-00005.jp2/full/full/0/default.jpg

https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-VANNECK-BOX-00005-A-FOLIO-00001-000-00008.jp2/full/full/0/default.jpg

https://images.lib.cam.ac.uk/iiif/MS-VANNECK-BOX-00005-A-FOLIO-00001-000-00010.jp2/full/full/0/default.jpg

Click the ‘Preview’ button. As you move the cursor over the image, it fades through all three.

The three images are all of the same object, but include one regular and two multispectral images of the Merlin Fragment manuscript.

It’s like you’re cursor as become a magic wand!

Journal Entry

You can’t view the image this way in Exhibit.so, but see if you can import the Merlin Fragment into your journal:

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/MS-VANNECK-BOX-00005-A-FOLIO-00001

You could add a couple of entries exploring the different images or reflections How do different ways of viewing these images change your perspective? How does the way you interact with the different viewers change?

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step Five: Present and Correct

IIIF Literacy Part 2

Summary

You’ve started to get to grips with the IIIF Image API. Well Done!

But how are individual images combined with metadata in order to present complete digital objects?

This step introduces you to the IIIF Manifest and the Presentation API.

Learning Objective:

Theory: Presentation API

You might have seen the word ‘Manifest’ mentioned on your journey so far. What is a IIIF Manifest and what are its components?

Manifests are central to how IIIF works. They are packages of information and links to all of the things that make a IIIF Resource into a single digital object. IIIF Manifests enable different viewers and other tools to import and display or use these digital objects.

IIIF Manifests are documents in a format called JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) that provides a way to encode all the necessary information in a standardised way. These documents can look intimidating, but remember they are designed to be machine readable. They will make more sense to you the more you work with them though.

The good news is that you don’t really need to look at them much and you already know how to use them!

Manifests are made available online through a URL, meaning you just need to know how to find the URL of the IIIF Resource you want, and copy and paste that URL into a IIIF Viewer or Tool. You’ve been using them throughout your journey in the IIIF Labyriiinth, and hopefully in [Step Three: Code Breaking] you also learnt that some of this code isn’t all that scary.

Even if you don’t want to get into the code, it helps to understand the basic structure of a Manifest. This screenshot of a IIIF Resource in a viewing tool can be broken down into the components of a Manifest.

{fig-alt=”A diagram demonstrating the IIIF Presentation API structure.”}

The elements outlined in red represent different bits of the structure of the digital object - the Title, the Metadata, and the Sequence of images presented on virtual spaces called Canvases.

A IIIF Canvas is a single defined virtual space on which a single or multiple media such as images can be presented.

The elements outlined in blue represent image data. They use the Image API to display the required IIIF Images in the sequence of Canvases.

flowchart TD
  A[Manifest] --> B[Sequence]
  B --> C{Canvas}
  C --> D(Content Media A One)
  C --> E(Content Media B Two)

Activity:

Explore the object in this IIIF viewer and think about which IIIF API’s are used to present the different elements.

How do I find IIIF Manifests? Look for the logo, or their sometimes hidden in ‘use’ or ‘share’ options. It’s tricky because everyone does it slightly differentl, and often with good reason. So learning how to find them is a skill.

The IIIF Community have prepared Guides to finding IIIF resources that are a great place to start.

Exercise

Start by picking one of the Guides to finding IIIF resources and see if you can find a Manifest for a IIIF resource. Now try to find one from a different institution.

Journal Entry

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Step Six: Drawing Conclusions

Summary

You can input IIIF manifests into lots of different tools, including ones that can apply machine learning and computer vision (yes - AI!). But you need to be mindful of the limitations.

Learning Objective:

Exercise

Have a go at using a IIIF resource to undertake some automated analysis.

Using the IIIF Illustration Detector tool that was developed by William Mattingly (Yale) and Daniel van Strien (Hugging Face).

  1. Enter this manifest: 
    https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/PR-FH-00910-00083-00098
  2. Click ‘Load Manifest’.
  3. Set the ‘Confidence Threshold’ to 85%.
  4. Tick ‘Show only illustrated pages’, and Click ‘Classify’.
  5. Once it’s finished, click ‘View All Pages’ and you will be able to look through just the pages that the tool believes have illustrations on. Handy!

Let’s try that again with a different resource…

This time, enter this manifest:

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk//iiif/MS-OR-00770

What do you notice?

Hint: It seems to work pretty well for the first IIIF Resource, but the machine vision tool classifies nearly every page of the second IIIF Resource as an illustrated page.

Why do you think this is?

Hint: Neither item is written in a latin script, and both use quite graphic scripts. But perhaps the distinction between illustration and text is more obvious in the first item, whereas the arabic script of the second item is very bold and less distinguishable from any purely graphic elements.

Journal Entry

Add the Manifests for two IIIF Resources to you journal and include comment/caption entries briefly describing your own thoughts and answers.

This exercise used an easy to use tool, but you can apply all sorts of AI models to do different things - even transcribing handwriting! There’s a tool for that: Transkribus.

But to really get into AI models, you might be better off learning to code using Python/R so that you can develop a beter understanding of the limitations.

The IIIF Labyriiinth

Toolkit

A handy reference guide to a selection of IIIF tools and further information.

Hint: Don’t forget that IIIF is constantly developing and is quite complex and sometimes frustrating. Stick with it, figuring things out is a great way to learn!

Tools used along this IIIF Labyriiinth journey

Now that you’ve reached the centre of the IIIF Labyriiinth you should be ready to make your way out and continue your IIIF journey.

Tools to explore further

The IIIF Labyriiinth

About:

The IIIF Labyriiinth is an open educational resource developed by Andy Corrigan as part of the CDH Methods Fellowship programme 2025/26. The content was designed to be delivered as a four hour workshop called Using Digitised Collections: IIIF Literacy, Methods and Tools, which took place on 16 March 2026.

Andy is developing the IIIF Labyriiinth into a web-based resource that can be used either concurrently for in-person training or asynchronous learning. It still needs some further work, but much of it is presented here.

It is designed as a journey that begins with the creation of a self-reflective digital space that the learner can use to build their experience as they learn more about IIIF. By starting with the creation of this space, the learner has already begun using IIIF before they develop an understanding of what it is.

Grounded in pedagogical theory and information literacy, The IIIF Labyriiinth has been developed using theoretical approaches such as Kolb’s experiential learning cycle (Kolb 2015), which compliments the labyrinth’s form and nature, and backward Design (Wiggins and McTigue 2005), and is designed to compliment the Cambridge Information Literacy Framework.

Acknowledgements

The IIIF Labyrinth wouldn’t be possible without the endeavor of the entire IIIF Community. But thanks are due in particular to Glen Robson’s extensive IIIF Training resources, and also those, and several key tools developed by Chris Gilman (UCLA), Chien-Ling Liu Zeleny (UCLA), and Ben Johnston (Princeton) who chair the IIIF For Education Community Group, and who have created an inspring, encouraging and supportive community.

Many thanks also to the initial attendees of the workshop, who demonstrated that this approach can be effective.

References

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Written by Andy Corrigan, 2026-02-23
orcid: 0000-0002-3896-2489
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Methods Fellows 2025 lessons