Date: Monday 18 May, 2020
Time: 10:15 - 12:15 (2 hours)
Track: Standards and Best Practices
Level: Introductory
Instructor: Fenella G. France and Andrew Forsberg
Requirements: Participants will need to bring personal computers to take best advantage of the course.

Benefits: This course enables the attendee to:

• Expand their data visualization capabilities through learning how to integrate and render spectral imaging as an additional collections access tool for their institution and collections. Access to spectral (multi/hyper) and scientific data has long been a challenge for cultural heritage institutions.
• Gain skills in expanding the capacities of IIIF and Mirador — “widely accepted open source tools” — to focus on best practice, standardized procedures, and effective data visualization, including:
• Hands on rendering layers of a spectral imaging dataset in IIIF / Mirador (personal computer required).
• Hands on introduction to adding curatorial or scientific data annotations.
• Integrating priorities of scholars, curators, and researchers in digital projects.
• Managing access to large datasets and metadata.

Course Description
Basic digitization alone does not reveal everything contained within the original material, and cannot detect, for example, erased and redacted writing or faded inks. These features are important for scholars, authentication, and collections care. A Data Visualization Project Initiative (DVP) has created a cloud-based integration of spectral and scientific data analyses linked to a visual rendering of the heritage object. This initiative uses a commonly shared international infrastructure, the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), expanding access through the Mirador viewer, an open-source, web based, multi-window image viewing platform with the ability to zoom, display, compare, and annotate images.

Intended Audience: The course supports a wide range of professionals who work on or are planning to work on collaborative, multidisciplinary data visualization projects that would benefit from using linked content to add value to digitized items. These include preservation professionals and scholars; scientists and engineers; digital specialists, program managers, and directors; and archivists, curators, librarians, and researchers.

Fenella G. France, chief of the Preservation Research and Testing Division, develops non-destructive imaging techniques for collections. Her focus is spectral imaging and processing techniques to increase links between scientific and scholarly data. She received her PhD from Otago University, New Zealand, and has worked internationally on many heritage projects. She serves on a range of professional committees, collaborating with colleagues from academic, cultural, forensic, and federal institutions. She is currently a distinguished presidential fellow for CLIR.

Dr. Andrew Forsberg, a preservation researcher in the Preservation Research and Testing Division at the Library of Congress, previously a CLIR/DLF/Mellon postdoctoral fellow in data curation for medieval studies, researches using internet-based technologies to improve data sharing, and collaboration between the sciences and humanities in cultural heritage institutions.