Compare objects

Analyse digital objects from different institutions in a single workspace

There may be times when you want to compare multiple digital objects from repositories, that might be on different sides of the world. Preliminary sketches with a final artwork, or multiple versions of a manuscript. IIIF supports this too, using Mirador, a web-based viewer

Mirador is an alternative IIIF viewer. One of its features is being able to gather together multiple objects (images and their descriptions), from digital collections all over the world, and allow them to be saved in a particular state.

For example, a researcher might load four or five books to Mirador, open each to a particular page, and zoom each page to a particular detail. Mirador allows that researcher to come back to their workspace at a later date, or even share it with others to work collaboratively.

Open Mirador in a new tab. The demo is pre-loaded with a painting from Harvard Art Museums, and a manuscript from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Notice that if you click on the hamburger icon (three horizontal lines), you can see the object's metadata, as well as the image.

If you click on the blue plus (+) icon in the top left, you can select other objects to pull into the workspace. In the next exercise, we'll use Mirador to compare two manuscripts side by side.

Exercise: Comparing objects in Mirador

• Go to Mirador, and close down any open objects in your workspace by clicking the crosses in the top right corner.

• Click on the 'Start here' button in the top left. Click 'Add resource' in the bottom right to add a new one. Copy this IIIF manifest, then paste into the text field, and click 'Add': https://hdl.huntington.org/iiif/2/p15150coll7:2838/manifest.json.

• The object will load in the list of resources. Click on it to pull it into your workspace.

• The loaded manifest is a manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, held at the Huntingdon Library in Philadelphia. Let's compare it with another version, held in Cologny, Switzerland. Click on the blue plus (+) icon, then 'Add resource'. Copy this manifest, paste into Mirador, then click 'Add': https://www.e-codices.ch/metadata/iiif/fmb-cb-0048/manifest.json.

• The second manuscript will be added to the list of resources. Click on it to pull it into your workspace.

• Use the arrows at the bottom of each manuscript (click on the manuscript to make them appear) to find the first page of each. Zoom in on the illuminated 'W' initial, and compare both versions.