The University of Göttingen and the Göttingen State and University Library, Germany, will play host to the 2019 IIIF Annual Conference.
The IIIF or International Image Interoperability Framework is an international community drawn from many of the World’s leading academic, heritage and scientific organisations working together to create technology that allows for the collaborative and interoperable technology for the web-based delivery of images. As the IIIF website says: “Access to image-based resources is fundamental to research, scholarship and the transmission of cultural knowledge. Digital images are a container for much of the information content in the Web-based delivery of images, books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps, scrolls, single sheet collections, and archival materials. Yet much of the Internet’s image-based resources are locked up in silos, with access restricted to bespoke, locally built applications.” IIIF aims to break open those silos and enable sharing of image-based collections.
The Göttingen Planning Committee is looking for proposals for talks in the following forms:
Up to a ½ day workshop
7 to 10-minute lightning talks
20-minute presentations (plus 10 mins questions)
90-minute open block (Could be panel session or grouped presentations)
Time is extremely short to submit an abstract of no longer than 500 words for your presentation or discussion as they need to be in by Friday the 1st of March using the conference tool. But I know the committee are welcoming papers from Africa:
https://goo.gl/forms/qNOT6i2IAW75C6NS2
Africa Media Online was the first organisation in Africa to implement IIIF technology and over the past year has been hard at work building this technology into our MEMAT digital asset management system enabling our clients to benefit from cutting edge IIIF innovations.
Toward the end of May 2018, I had the privilege of being the first speaker from Africa to have ever presented at the IIIF Annual Conference. It was held at the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. I found it such a stimulation to be interacting with scientific, heritage and IT people who are on the cutting edge of enabling access to digital resources. I presented on how we have used IIIF to enhance the user experience of the ANC Digital Archive and you can hear a version of my 10-minute presentation on Vimeo.
When I go abroad to such conferences I am always amazed at how large institutions, government agencies and organisations work together with small enterprises. There is a clear recognition of the strength of small and medium entrepreneurial businesses to innovate at a speed not possible for larger entities. At the launch of the Wits-NRF Digitisation Capacity Development Initiative, I made an appeal for just such close collaboration among institutions, organisations, agencies and business here in South Africa around creating and sustaining digital collections.
