From Folder to Manifest in a Minute: Introducing tiny.iiif

Today’s post is a bit of a guest appearance. It’s not actually about liiive at all, but instead about another small project of mine: tiny.iiif.

If you ever had a folder of image files and asked yourself how you can turn them into a working IIIF Presentation manifest–without setting up a full-blown collection management system–this post is for you.

Using IIIF resources online is becoming easier all the time, thanks to a growing ecosystem of viewers, tools and software libraries. But every now and then I get asked about options for publishing your own images as IIIF. I always felt there’s a bit of a gap there.

On the one hand, IIIF is a standard that’s predominantly implemented by larger institutions. So it’s not surprising that lightweight publishing workflows for small, personal collections aren’t really a thing. In an institutional setting, IIIF is usually just a feature of a larger asset management system.

On the other hand, there are plenty of situations where you might want to publish a very small collection–maybe a few dozen images: for classroom work, a small exhibition, or to present results of a thesis or research project.

Hosting Your Own IIIF Collection

The (awesome!) awesome-iiif list includes several hosting options for publishing images as IIIF. In practice, though, these options aren’t always easy to get started with, can be costly, or only provide an Image API endpoint.

One of the more approachable alternatives is Omeka-S, which is an excellent digital collection platform with IIIF support. But it still comes with a learning curve, and it may be overkill if all you have is a bunch of folders of JPEGs and all you want is to see those folders online as manifests.

tiny.iiif

tiny.iiif is meant to fill exactly this gap. It’s a minimal open-source IIIF server, built specifically for cases where you just want to turn a bunch of images into a functional IIIF collection with as little friction as possible.

It provides:

• A simple drag-and-drop admin interface
• Built-in IIIF Image API v2 and v3 support
• Instant manifest creation

The goal isn’t to replace a collection platform, but to offer a middle ground between full asset management system and hand-editing your own manifest JSON.

Technical Overview

Under the hood, tiny.iiif combines three components:

• Cantaloupe, an open-source image server implementing IIIF Image API v2 and v3
• NGINX, used as a lightweight web server and reverse proxy, and to serve manifest JSON
• A user-friendly admin UI

Everything is packaged using Docker Compose, so there’s no need to install or configure these pieces manually. In a typical setup, getting started is mostly a matter of setting the admin username and password and launching the stack with a single Docker Compose command.

Important: this also means tiny.iiif is self-hosted server software. You will need access to a server (physical or virtual) and be reasonably comfortable with basic server administration and Docker. If that’s within your comfort zone, tiny.iiif should get you from images-on-disk to published IIIF resources very quickly.

Update: if you like the idea of tiny.iiif but don’t want to deal with running your own server, I’m now also starting to offer a managed hosting service – see last paragraph of this blogpost!

Using the Admin Interface

The part that’s actually new about tiny.iiif is the admin GUI:

• You upload your images by simply dragging them into the admin interface.
• tiny.iiif stores them in Cantaloupe’s image source directory.
• Cantaloupe immediately serves them via the IIIF Image API. (Clicking an image in the admin GUI gives you a live preview.)

From there:

• You create “folders” in the admin UI.
• You drag images into those folders.
• Each folder is instantly exposed as a IIIF Presentation manifest, served via NGINX.

In other words: folders become manifests, without any additional configuration.

Try It Out

If you’d like to give it a try, the code and setup instructions are available on GitHub:

https://github.com/rsimon/tiny-iiif

tiny.iiif is MIT licensed and still evolving. Contributions are welcome and I’d love to hear your feedback!

Update: Managed Hosting

If you would like to use tiny.iiif but don’t want to set up and maintain your own server, I can host it for you. You’ll get your own private tiny.iiif instance at a custom address of your choice:

https://your-name.tiny-iiif.org

Managed hosting is available for a modest fee, which directly supports the continued development of the project. If this sounds useful, drop me a short email and I’ll put together an offer that fits your needs.

Hi I'm Rainer, a freelance software developer based in Vienna, Austria. I created liiive out of a passion for the Digital Humanities and a fascination with realtime web technologies. I believe that studying historical materials online should feel as natural and engaging as gathering around a table together. For updates and tips, follow me on Mastodon or Bluesky.