Elizabeth McAulay
Interim Head, Digital Library Program
University of California, Los Angeles
Todd Grappone
Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology
University of California, Los Angeles
Our project briefing will present an in-progress project to publish a fully online spectral image dataset of medieval manuscripts with two layers of textual materials, i.e., palimpsests. Our mandate is to present a rich dataset with multiple axes for browsing images, and multiple image manipulation tools to facilitate online use. Currently, both the owning institution and the size of the dataset prevent dissemination of these assets via download. Therefore, the website had to meet the needs of very specialized scholars so that they could fully interact with images so that they could decipher illegible text, physical features, and possible relationships between folios. For our project we are using an IIIF-compliant image server and a modified branch of the Mirador viewer. In this presentation, we will review the functional requirements for the online interface, and the way we implemented the Mirador viewer to accomplish an initial proof of concept. We will discuss the key components of Mirador and IIIF that enabled our work as well as some of the challenges of working with rapidly evolving open source software.
http://www.sinaipalimpsests.org/