The Europeana Natural History Aggregator OpenUp! has published an online tool that supports the automated creation of IIIF manifests out of uploaded EDM metadata.
This guide describes in detail how to use the tool and how your EDM metadata is transformed.
The tool is currently available in version 1, i.e. it supports the conversion of EDM metadata for digital images hosted in IIIF compliant image servers. Subsequent versions will integrate the creation of IIIF manifests for audio and video data.
The tool is realised in co-operation with Europeana and uses the same IIIF mapping as Europeana.
1 Goal of the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool v01
This guide introduces you to the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation Tool. It was initially created as a successor of the Image Conversion Guide to facilitate the workflow towards making your digital images IIIF compliant.
IIIF stands for International Image Interoperability Framework (spoken Triple-Eye-F). The framework was created to offer the scientific community a way to productively interact with their digital objects (visual or audio/visual) and use them across different platforms. Here you can learn about the benefits of IIIF.
If you are looking for a general introduction to the IIIF framework, please check out the What is IIIF? training resources for aggregators.
When deciding to use the IIIF standard for publishing your images on the internet there are a few obstacles to take, because: the more images you want to convert and equip with the Image API and the Presentation API, the more time you will have to invest to create IIIF compliant images and manifests. (A IIIF manifest is the package that contains all the information related to a particular digital object, including the image itself as well as the metadata.) The manifest creation tool aims to make this process less time-consuming by automating the creation of IIIF manifests for your images.
With this tool you can:
use EDM metadata (of IMAGE type - cultural heritage objects) to automatically create IIIF manifests for images and enrich the EDM metadata with IIIF descriptions
download the IIIF manifests that were created based on your EDM metadata (about manifest creation details see chapter 9)
download the enriched EDM metadata with IIIF descriptions (about enrichment of EDM details see chapter 10)
2 Where to find the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool
The EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation Tool can be accessed through https://openup.ait.co.at/edm2manifest/ .
This tool was developed in the Python programming language, using the Flask framework. To use this tool, the user only needs Internet connection and a browser.
3 How to prepare your dataset
In order to use the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool you have to prepare your data appropriately. You need to verify that your dataset can be used with the tool before proceeding. Several considerations must be made:
Your IIIF images should be stored in the correct location on the image server, because you need to enter your IIIF service base URL as input to the tool. (N.B. The process of generating the IIIF service URL is described in the IIIF Image Conversion Guide.) “Correct location” in this context means: a folder with your IIIF images which the web server makes accessible through the URL address.
Your EDM metadata records must to follow the Europeana Data Model specifications. You can find more information about EDM in the Documentation.
Your dataset must be uploaded using the OAI-PMH protocol or a zip file.
4 General interface elements
Below is a list of the general interface elements and their uses.
4.1 The Welcome screen
The default screen, the screen you land on when navigating to the tool is the Welcome screen.
You can click ‘Start’ to navigate to the Home screen (see section below).
4.2 The Home screen
This screen allows you to start accessing the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool. Here you can track existing data or initiate a new upload. It looks like this:
4.2.1 Input fields
The input fields are the white boxes where information must be entered by you. The description above the input field states what information should be entered. Every input field comes with a possible input example. Each field is mandatory.
4.2.2 Buttons
The radio buttons are used to select the upload method to upload EDM metadata records through OAI-PMH or file upload and to download the resulting manifests and enriched EDM data:
…or to refresh your harvesting results.
5 Upload a new dataset
The EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool was implemented as an open web service. Therefore it is not possible yet to create a user account (this may be implemented in v02). When uploading your EDM metadata records you have to make sure to choose a unique name for the upload. If the name already exists, you will be requested to confirm the override of the previous set. Please try not to delete other uploads by choosing the same name.
5.1 Data input
This screen allows you to start accessing the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool. Here you can track existing data or initiate a new upload. The “Upload Data” form looks like shown in the figure below and can at the same time be used to track or later download a previous dataset.
Dataset Name Input: used to enter the unique name of a new dataset you want to create or a previously uploaded dataset you want to track.
Base URL for images: used to enter the base URL for your IIIF images.
Base URL for manifests: used to enter the base URL where you want to store your resulting IIIF manifests.
OAI-PMH upload: this box opens an input field for your OAI-PMH link.
File upload: this box opens an input field for uploading your EDM records via zip file.
Track dataset: this box enables tracking the status as well as downloading the created manifests and enriched EDM records.
First, enter a descriptive name for your dataset in the input field “Name”. The next step is to set the base URLs (where they are/will be located) for both the IIIF images and the IIIF manifests. We suggest taking the pre-filled URLs as an example.
The next step is to determine the “Harvest protocol”: how you want to upload your dataset. This is described in detail below. The “Submit” button at the bottom will be enabled when all information is filled in.
5.2 The harvest protocol
There are two ways to upload your datasets to the EDM2IIIF Manifest Creation tool:
OAI-PMH upload: Ingestion with OAI-PMH
File upload: upload a zip file
The “Submit” button will become enabled once you have filled all fields. Click the “Submit” button to upload your dataset. To track and download your data, see chapter 6.
If the upload has been successful, a green information window will appear (see following paragraphs).
5.2.1 OAI-PMH
To use the harvesting protocol OAI-PMH, you should enter an URL for harvesting your data. The URL of your OAI-PMH should look like this:
For more details on the appearance of the URL, please see the OAI-PMH specifications.
If the upload of your data was successful, the following message appears:
5.2.2 Zip file
This option allows you to upload a zip file with an EDM dataset (xml files) that is stored locally. Click on “Durchsuchen” (or “Search”; depending on the language setting on your computer) and choose the zip file with your data. It is important to know that only files with the ending .zip can be uploaded successfully.
If the upload of your data was successful, the following message appears:
6 Track dataset processing
After successfully submitting your dataset to be processed, the status can be checked in the following steps:
Enter dataset name
Choose Track/download harvested dataset as harvest protocol
Click the Submit button
As a result of the above steps, the new page with the harvest details will be opened. The following figure shows what the resulting page looks like. While the process is not completed, the "Refresh" button is enabled in the "Results" column.
When the process of data harvest is complete, the "Download" button becomes available (see figure below), which allows to download the resulting manifests, the enriched EDMs and the log.json file, with all of them compressed into a zip file.
The log.json file can also be downloaded from the "Process Info" column at any time so that you know what is happening with the processing of the records. More details about this file are provided in the next chapter.
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