Individual Assignment 2: Digital Systems

https://www.exhibit.so/exhibits/P3NUO3XHm34QbxxzzSA8

For this assignment, I chose to experiment with International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) by formatting and embedding digital objects with Exhibit.so. I had initially hoped to gain some experience using Quire for digital publication of objects, but my coding and web design experience is incredibly limited, and I had a difficult time learning the necessary coding skills to effectively utilize Quire’s tools. IIIF ended up being much more straightforward to work with, as many online museums that already implement this technology share their IIIF manifest information freely (for this exhibit, I borrowed a manifest link hosted by Münchener Digitalisierungszentrum Digitale Bibliothek). While IIIF holds a lower barrier to entry than some of the other systems we experimented with during class, it still requires a basic to intermediate understanding of web hosting and embedding in order to be implemented effectively. This high technical skills barrier is what discouraged me initially. Even now, I know that I’m almost certainly not utilizing the technology to its fullest potential; I hope to experiment with IIIF further in the future and gain a better understanding of its potential implementations.

This framework holds potential benefits for a myriad of institutions to facilitate digital hosting and sharing of items within their collections. As I understood it, IIIF allows for museums to digitally “loan out” objects in a way, although with some major advantages over traditional lending of physical materials. Not only are these objects infinitely reproducible (anyone with the manifest link can use and refer back to the original object, even if another institution is using it as well), IIIF also allows for digitized objects to be shared in the highest quality possible (to make this make sense to me, I’ve thought of it in terms of lossy versus lossless formats for audio, such as .mp3 versus .wav). Sharing these objects in high quality can provide a sense of realism not otherwise found in a digital exhibit and can more totally immerse the viewer. IIIF also makes digital provenance much easier to trace, as manifests can easily be traced back to their original host. Compare this concept to something like a traditional image file; although digital provenance can be marked and stored within the metadata of a file, it can be easily edited or removed entirely when duplicating and re-sharing a file. This stands to benefit not only the digital museums that host exhibits built using these objects but also researchers through enabling them to discern exactly where a hosted object originated from.

In implementing this technology more broadly, there are several challenges to consider. First and foremost, there exists the technological skill barrier which I mentioned earlier. As a science which has traditionally been based in the physical world and still focuses primarily on the preservation of and access to physical objects, librarianship has had trouble incorporating digital technologies into this ethos. Additionally, many seasoned library staff, including those in leadership roles with decades of experience, did not grow up with technology and are thus even further removed from an understanding of the skills required to implement these systems. Beyond this, there is also the challenge of integrating accessibility standards with IIIF. Are objects created using this framework compatible with tools like screen readers which can help people with disabilities interact with them? How can we ensure that this system is not only easy to implement but practical and equitable to access?

I would also be remiss not to mention the comparison between IIIF technology and another, more prevalent format of digital ownership: the blockchain. IIIF tech holds many significant advantages over blockchain tech. For one, it is much more ethically sound; while blockchain tech utilizes a series of complex mathematical equations to safeguard ownership, IIIF functions more like a universal link to an object. Because of this, the environmental implications of IIIF tech are much less severe, as the amount of energy utilized to uphold and verify ownership is much lower. However, blockchain does have certain advantages over IIIF; because it is decentralized and the tech can be utilized by anyone, it does not feature the barriers to entry that generating IIIF codes does. In fact, at least one tech startup has noticed this and proposed a concept for a blockchain-based image tracking tech similar to IIIF, Mediachain. While there are still a number of issues with the concept, both technical and ethical, it stands to reinforce the similarity of these two technologies and suggests ways in which their ideas may be combined.