Implementing the IIIF Presentation 2 0 API as a Linked Open Data Model in the Fedora Repository
Channel: SWIB
Date: 21/12/2016

Christopher Hanna Johnson (Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Germany).
Title: Implementing the IIIF Presentation 2.0 API as a Linked Open Data Model in the Fedora Repository

Abstract: "The IIIF Presentation API specifies a web service that returns JSON-LD structured documents that together describe the structure and layout of a digitized object or other collection of images and related content." IIIF website The dynamic serialization of IIIF JSON-LD structured manifests via SPARQL CONSTRUCT is an interesting possibility that has great potential for cross-domain discovery and rendering of digitized objects with variable criteria. I have explored this possibility by implementing a data model in the Fedora Commons Repository that matches the specifications of the IIIF Presentation API. Fedora has the facility to index objects via Apache Camel directly to a triplestore. With SPARQL CONSTRUCT, the triplestore can serialize normalized JSON-LD as a graph. The use of "ordered lists" (aka collections) is a fundamental component of JSON-LD and necessary feature of the IIIF manifest sequence which is represented in a canonical RDF graph as a cascade of blank nodes. In order to dynamically create the sequence with SPARQL requires that the data is modelled identically to the IIIF specification. This gist is a representation of a compacted and framed JSON-LD graph that was serialized from a SPARQL query of Fedora metadata. The ability to assemble parts of distinct, disparate and disassociated digital objects on demand in one cohesive presentation becomes a real possibility. For example, the "range" object is equivalent to a part of a sequence, like a chapter in a book. With SPARQL, it is possible to target ranges from different "editions" based on a metadata specification (i.e. a person, place, or date) and unify them in a manifest object which is then rendered by a client viewer like OpenSeadragon.


SWIB16 Conference, 28 - 30 November 2016, Bonn, Germany
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Licence: CC-BY-SA
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/