Eleven of the fourteen PHAROS institutions met in Rome at the Biblioteca Hertziana on June 9-10, 2017, a meeting held to coincide with the annual conference of The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community.
After a report by each institution indicated an increased commitment to getting materials online, the two main orders of business were to discuss formalizing the structural organization of the consortium and when new members could join. The institutions decided to create and sign a Memorandum of Understanding by October 1st, 2017, and not to expand the group for now. Later, members decided to require images to be IIIF compliant in order to take advantage of the maximum functionality IIIF affords. A report on a user survey given in May produced eye-opening results and will be followed up in a to-be-formed User group. A presentation on copyright by Melissa Fournier of Yale spurred the formation of a Copyright and Intellectual Property working group. It was also decided that the Technical Advisory Group should be relaunched, led by Lily Pregill of the Getty.
Overall the conference proved there is a renewed commitment to the project by all attending partners and that solid progress is being made.
