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Request for Comment: IIIF Image API Proposal

The International Image Interoperability Framework (http://lib.stanford.edu/iiif) is an initiative driven by several major research and national libraries to enable the rich and robust delivery of digital images through common interfaces, and to spur the development of open source and commercial software solutions in this space.

The IIIF Working Group invites comment and feedback on a proposed API for the the delivery of images via a standard http request. The full specification can be found at:

http://library.stanford.edu/iiif/image-api

The IIIF Image API specifies a web service that returns an image in response to a standard http or https request. The URL can specify the region, size, rotation, quality characteristics and format of the requested image. A URL can also be constructed to request basic technical information about the image to support client applications.

The IIIF Image API was conceived of to facilitate systematic reuse of image resources, and enable their delivery through a diversity of software applications and environments, regardless of underlying technology platforms. The API is designed to be adoptable by any image repository or service provider, and can be used to retrieve static images in response to a properly constructed URL. We invite you to read this specification and provide us critical feedback.

Please send feedback to iiif-feedback@googlegroups.com by June 22, 2012.

Once all feedback is reviewed and incorporated, we will release the specification for adoption.

If you would like to follow future IIIF-related developments, you may be interested in joining the initiative's announcements email list https://groups.google.com/d/forum/iiif-announce.

If you would like to participate in IIIF's development, and/or implement or consume the API for your image repository or image delivery software, we encourage you to join the IIIF discussion email list https://groups.google.com/d/forum/iiif-discuss