1. Oculus: Using Open APIs to Share
Harvard’s Digitized Books and Manuscripts
Harvard University IT Summit
June 5, 2014

2. Our Speakers
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Jud Harward, Director of Research Computing for the Arts and Humanities,
Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture,
Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University
Rashmi Singhal, Software Engineer, HarvardX
Randy Stern, Director, Systems Development, Library Technology
Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Jeff Emanuel, Senior Project Lead (Instructional Development), HarvardX

3. How do you view digitized books and manuscripts?
Page Delivery Service – the old browser version
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/
10840328?n=8&printThumbnails=true
Slide thanks to Randy Stern

4. PDS Drawback 1: Each Archive Had Its Own Viewer
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Bavarian State Library Houghton Library
Uses
DFG
Viewer
Uses
PDS
Viewer
WWW

5. PDS Drawback 2: Old Fashioned Interface
Contrast Chip Goines’ Tablet PDS (2012)
http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/
mobile/index.html?id=10840328
Slide thanks to Randy Stern

6. PDS Drawback 3: Difficulty in Adding Features
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• 2 page view with opening
• Better ways to navigate a volume
• Support for layered views (e.g., image and transcription)
• Support for annotation
• Ability to compare documents from multiple archives and
even to assemble “virtual” volumes

7. Project Timeline
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• July, 2012: Initial meetings with Jeffrey Hamburger
• November, 2012: Digital Arts and Humanities Committee charters
working group
• February, 2013: Working group reports backs favoring
implementation of new page viewer
o based on the Stanford-led Digital Medieval Manuscript Initiative
o open source and compliant with public APIs
• March – May 2013: discussions
o with HarvardX linking new page viewer with HarvardX History
of the Book modules;
o with Library Technical Advisory Board
• June, 2013: Samantha Earp and Robert Lue of HarvardX commit
funding for a 1 year developer
• December, 2013: Rashmi Singhal starts as principal Harvard
developer of new Harvard viewer christened Oculus
Concept &
Requirements
Politics
Implementation

8. Risks vs Benefits of Oculus Strategy
• Risks:
o Large number of organizations involved with multiple handoffs
in development: Stanford, HarvardX, Harvard LTS
o Many chefs, few cooks
o Harvard does not control all the decisions or resources
• Benefits
o Open source result built according to open standards
o Strong possibility of support via community process going
forward
o Tool should be compatible with multiple archives
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9. Jeffrey Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and
Culture, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard
University
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10. 10
http://youtu.be/s7YsyBvHCxU

11. Rashmi Singhal, Software Engineer, HarvardX
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12. 12

13. 13

14. 14

15. 15

16. 16

17. 17

18. Perspective from the Library
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19. Library Technology Services goals
• Provide an improved book display user interface
• Expose digital content through standard APIs
• Position content for future uses (transcription,
annotation)
• Collaborate more!
• within Harvard (building on the successful Tablet PDS
collaboration)
• externally with peer institutions
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20. Improved book display - Oculus

21. Improved book display - Oculus
• 2 page view of book opening
• Full screen mode
• Annotation ready
• Ability to display Shared Canvas books from both the DRS
and other institutions within the same U/I
• Modern javascript implementation

22. Open Harvard library digital content for reuse
and allow Harvard to reuse external content
• A content delivery API (the digital book or digital
image)
• not a metadata API (title, author, subject)
Two pronged approach:
• Represent the physical object in a common data
model
• (Shared Canvas)
• Deliver and receive data via a common API
• (IIIF – the International Image Interoperability Framework)

23. Common Data Model - Shared Canvas
http://www.shared-canvas.org

24. Open Annotation
http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/

25. IIIF - IIIF Image API
http://iiif.io/api/image/1.1/
e.g. http://ids.lib.harvard.edu/ids/iiif/5981100/1024,1024,512,512/pct:50/0/native.jpg

26. IIIF - IIIF Presentation API
…
"canvases": [
{
"@id":"http://www.example.org/iiif/book1/canvas/p1.json",
"@type":"sc:Canvas",
"label":"p. 1",
"height":1000,
"width":750,
"images": [
// Links to the Content resources go here ...
]
}, …

27. IIIF Collaborators
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• British Library
• Oxford University
• Stanford University
• Johns Hopkins University
• University of Fribourg (e-codices)
• Saint Louis University (T-PEN)
• Drew University (DM)
• TextGrid
• Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Yale University
• Harvard University
• Cambridge University
• ARTstor
• Cornell University
• Princeton University
• Walters Art Museum
• National Library of Norway
• The National Archives (UK)
• … and more

28. Last but not least – Improved future positioning
• Built on the W3C Open Annotation framework
• Support for the Open Knowledge Foundation’s
Annotatorjs package
• Compatibility with the HUIT Academic Technology
Services “Catch” annotation store (“Common Annotation,
Tagging, and Citation at Harvard”)
• Open source, with community support (
https://github.com/IIIF )

29. Perspective from HarvardX
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30. Innovative technology for a truly innovative learning
experience
The Book: Histories Across Time and
Space (HUM 1.Nx) is a Collaborative,
Interdisciplinary Array of Multimedia
Learning Objects that Stresses User
Direction and Non-Linearity to Create a
Unique and Effective Learning Experience

31. Innovation and Intimacy: Toward a More Effective User
Experience

32. Innovation and Intimacy: Toward a More Effective User
Experience

33. Innovation and Intimacy: Toward a More Effective User
Experience

34. Thank you.
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