Mirador Workshop: EPFL and the IIIF Community

The Institute of Digital Humanities has hosted a three-day workshop aimed at introducing and discussing the image viewer Mirador. Mirador is a multi-repository, configurable, extensible, and easy-to-integrate viewer and annotation creation and comparison environment for IIIF compatible image resources, ranging from deep-zooming artwork to complex manuscript objects. Scholars can thus view, compare, and annotate images which reside on servers in different physical locations.

A truly interdisciplinary experience, the workshop has brought together representatives of Harvard University, Stanford University, Biblissima (France), Berlin State Library, Leipzig University, University of Fribourg, P. Getty Trust and a number of independent researchers.

The workshop was a great opportunity to not only discuss common challenges but also to establish connections between experts that see Mirador and IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) as an opportunity for the Digital Humanities and the development of standardized tools and formats.

Finally, the workshop has been an important experience both for the Institute of Digital Humanities and the Digital Humanities as a field. With a long list of "desiderata" and a good memory of Lausanne, the attendees will soon approach the IIIF community meeting in Ghent with new ideas, new inputs and new ways of promoting collaboration and interdisciplinarity.