Exhibit.so – Sarah Vecere

I chose to use IIIf and exhibit.xo for the Digital Systems assignment because it seemed to have the least steep learning curve of the systems we experimented with, and this technology is new to me.

Here is the link to my exhibit Weight lifter.

Challenges

The initial challenge I had with this assignment was finding images to import using IIIf manifest. Though there are many collections in the guide to finding resources on the IIIf website, not all of them were accurate or simple to use. The instructions for Wikipedia, for example, involved a back door beta image service that only produced a dreaded 404 message, no matter how many images I tried, including the sample they provided. A central search engine for IIIf images would be extremely helpful.

I knew I wanted a photograph, so I settled on the Getty museum images collection. It was easy to find the IIIf manifest, and from there I only had to copy the URL address, but more challenges awaited. The exhibit.so help topics and tutorials are housed under the heading “Docs,” which was not obvious to me. I spent some time tinkering around and guessing how to do things before stumbling upon the help topics.

Instead of adding multiple images, I added one image because I wanted to practice zooming in on and annotating parts of the image. The zoom tool isn’t refined enough to get the exact desired size, and there does not appear to be a cropping tool. This was frustrating at first, but then I thought it may be because cropping the image would be altering it. Once I figured out how to create a basic exhibit, I had fun trying out the various formats and changing background and font colors. I settled on the slide format, because it was better suited to my project.

Benefits

It’s easy to see how IIIf benefits museums and researchers. Having an image and its metadata in one place, easily exportable makes it easy to create a collection of digital objects. The zoom feature allows you to view details you could never see with the naked eye. The more libraries, archives, and museums use IIIf protocol, the easier it is to compare objects across repositories. Museum professionals, researchers, and online museum visitors will have a richer understanding of objects they are viewing and a more engaging experience. From an institutional perspective, linked data and information sharing helps GLAM workers avoid unnecessary duplication and saves time. Exhibit.so allows users with no coding or website creation skills to create and share their own exhibits. These tools promote accessibility and inclusion without compromising information accuracy and quality.

Ready access to digitized assets was crucial during COVID-19 closures (Zhou & Long, 2020) and continues to be important as more people work and learn from home. As travel becomes more complicated or people look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, access to digital collections is a viable alternative to in-person visits to museums, archives, and other cultural heritage sites.

Challenges of Implementation

Challenges to implementing this system across institutions include institutional resistance to relinquishing control of images in their collection. This is not to say they would lose control of the objects themselves, but would have to concede that they are not the only voice capable of interpreting objects that happen to be housed in their repositories (Hamma, 2005).

Beth Harris and Stephen Zucker (2012), educators and founders of Smarthistory, The Center for Public Art History argue that high-quality digital reproductions have replaced slides as essential teaching tools and cite unwillingness to relinquish authority and fear of collections as driving institutional reluctance to restricting access to images. According to them, this is misguided because,

The more museums restrict their images, the more works of art appear on the web in poor-quality reproduction, without color controls and without proper metadata. Restrictive museum policies seek to retain authority, but in practice render the museum’s expertise largely irrelevant for those beyond its walls. It is time for museums to support, not undermine, the public domain and to allow reproductions of their collections to freely circulate.

(Harris & Zucker, 2012)

Conclusion

This exercise was valuable to me as a hands-on learning experience. I have now a basic understanding of IIIf and exhibit.so. Additional reading helped me grasp the value of these types of open access digital resources to LAM professionals, educators, researchers, students, and the interested public.

References

Hamma, K. (2005). Public domain art in an age of easier mechanical reproducibility. D-Lib Magazine, 11(11). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november05/hamma/11hamma.html

Harris, B. & Zucker, S. (2012, November 26). “Can I use this?” how museum and library image policies undermine education. eLiterate. https://eliterate.us/an-open-letter-to-museums-and-libraries-about-images/

Zhou, Y., & Long, Y. (2020, December). DIGITAL IMAGE PRESENTATION in LIBRARY DISCOVERY: Integrating Ex Libris and IIIF APIs. Computers in Libraries, 40(9), 16+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A646776147/AONE?u=tall85761&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=5e9b6981