Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 139.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2026-08-28 11:53:05+00:00
        From: Vahid Kaka <v.diamondia@hotmail.co.uk>
        Subject: A privacy-first approach to IIIF manuscript extraction

Dear Colleagues,

In my ongoing research with digital archives, I have observed a critical
architectural paradox regarding data privacy. While platforms like "e-codices"
and "the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana" or other manuscript repositories,
provide unprecedented access to manuscripts, the infrastructure researchers use
to interact with these archives often fails to meet modern security standards.
When researchers use cloud-based tools or browser extensions to download
manuscripts, the architecture inherently requires routing archive URLs and
institutional credentials through external servers. This abandons the
fundamental privacy of the physical reading room.

I have recently published a conceptual analysis exploring how localised,
privacy-first architectures can resolve this by shifting the heavy lifting of
image processing and metadata embedding to local machines. As part of this
research, I developed a localised implementation that interfaces directly with
the IIIF Manifest, ensuring no URLs, tokens, or research patterns ever leave the
scholar's computer.

I believe this approach is crucial for institutions with strict data compliance
policies. I would value the community's feedback on how localised data pipelines
can be further integrated into Digital Humanities workflows.
The full conceptual paper is available here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/412469024_Conceptual_Analysis_Architect
ural_Paradoxes_in_Digital_Manuscript_Preservation_and_Data_Privacy

Best regards,
Dr. Vahid Kaka
Independent Researcher
E: v.diamondia@hotmail.co.uk


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