IIIF
IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) refers to a set of standards for working with digitised historical objects such as manuscripts, single sheets, incunabula and maps. It also refers to the consortium and wider community of practice behind its adoption and development. Collections of image data, metadata and specifications for working with IIIF APIs are organised into so-called IIIF manifests, which are written in JSON-LD (JSON for Linking Data). See https://iiif.io for the website and more documentation there. What this means for CODECS is that its adoption by archival institutions allows us to pull in digitised manuscripts and other objects in IIIF-compliant image viewers and to use tools that lets us engage with the images in many interesting ways.
Not working?
It is possible that the providing institution has suspended its services, at least for the time being. The British Library, for instance, is still in the process of recovering from a cyber attack that happened in October 2023. Others may be taking measures to face excessive web traffic. In 2024, Trinity College, Dublin, appears to have taken preventive measures against bot attacks by requiring users to solve a Captcha challenge, making it currently impossible for this site to serve their resources.
Note that in rarer cases, the institution has not made all of its web services available over an HTTPS connection, even if these days, it is generally the preferred way of serving content on the web. The result is that for security reasons, the content is likely to be blocked, on our server or in your browser, and you may see a blank image viewer, with or without an error message to alert you of the failure. It is to be hoped that all relevant institutions will have been able to complete the transition to HTTPS in the foreseeable future.
Manuscripts (784)
Printed works (228)
Note that manifest URLs for resources on the Internet Archive (archive.org) have not been included in the section below, but can be found separately on this page.
Periodicals
IIIF with Mirador 3
If you know the manifest URL, you can enter it here and view the material in Mirador 3.