Experiential Viewing: Reimagining the Online Display of World War II Aerial Reconnaissance Photography with IIIF

This thesis aims to identify how cultural heritage institutions can use emerging new digital technologies such as the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) to improve interpretation and discovery of aerial reconnaissance photography collections online. The practical aspect of this project involves the creation of a IIIF manifest for a World War II (WWII) photographic sortie from the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP), in Edinburgh, Scotland. For contextual background on the collection at NCAP, a brief history of aerial photography from 1889 until the end of WWII is presented. In order to understand the current state of online exhibition of these collections, a survey of NCAP’s current online display of their collection, along with the Aeriofototeca Nazionale (Rome, Italy) and the Laurier Military History Archive (Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) was conducted.