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IIIF APIs (v3)

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You can access our images using standard International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) APIs. This is how to get the images of digitised works that you’ve found using the Catalogue API. Right now, only our open image collections are available and we support the IIIF Image API. We are working to add the IIIF Presentation, Search and Authentication APIs across all of our digitised collections.

IIIF Image API

The Image API allows for interoperable delivery of digital images. Simply, the API allows for constructing parameterized URIs for getting a particular region and/or size of an image. This ability to get regions and sizes of the image is what supports delivering thumbnails as well as deep zoom viewing. The image API also specifies a way to get information about the image and what image derivatives and image manipulation features are supported for that image.

Image

Request an image, which may be part of a larger image.

path Parameters
identifier
required
string

The identifier of the requested image. This may be an ark, URN, filename, or other identifier. Special characters must be URI encoded.

region
required
string^full|square|\d,\d,\d,\d|pct:\d,\d,\d,\d$

The region parameter defines the rectangular portion of the full image to be returned. Region can be specified by pixel coordinates x,y,w,h, percentage pct:x,y,w,h or by the values full or square.

size
required
string^full|\d*,\d*|pct:\d+$

The size parameter determines the dimensions to which the extracted region is to be scaled. Size can be specified by pixel coordinates w,h or w, or ,h, percentage pct:n or by the value full to return the image at its full size.

rotation
required
string^!?\d+\.?\d*$

The rotation parameter specifies mirroring and rotation. Rotation can be specified by any floating point number from 0 to 360. A leading exclamation mark indicates that the image should be mirrored before any rotation is applied.

quality
required
string
Enum: "default" "color" "gray" "bitonal"

The quality parameter determines whether the image is delivered in color, grayscale or black and white.

format
required
string
Enum: "jpg" "png" "gif" "webp"

The format of the returned image is expressed as an extension at the end of the URI.

Responses

Image Information

Request information about the image, including characteristics, functionality available, and related services.

path Parameters
identifier
required
string

The identifier of the requested image. This may be an ark, URN, filename, or other identifier. Special characters must be URI encoded.

Responses

Response samples

Content type
{}

Image

@id
required
string <uri>

The base URI of the image.

protocol
required
string <uri>
Value: "http://iiif.io/api/image"

The URI which can be used to determine that the document describes an image service which is a version of the IIIF Image API.

width
required
integer

The width in pixels of the full image content, given as an integer.

height
required
integer

The height in pixels of the full image content, given as an integer.

required
Array of strings or objects

A list of profiles, indicated by either a URI or an object describing the features supported. The first entry in the list must be a compliance level URI.

{}