The Center for History and New Media, in partnership with the Minnesota Historical Society, released Omeka this past winter. Omeka is a web platform or publishing tool for sharing collections and producing exhibitions online. Omeka is available free to download and it is open source, permitting all kinds of modifications as well as the development of new plug-ins (tools that give you more options) and themes (or graphic site designs). Omeka is designed for “museums, historical societies, scholars, collectors, educators and more.”
- How do you get started?
To utilize Omeka, you must download it from the website and then load it up into a server. If your organization contracts for a server account or runs its own web server, this should work although when I beta tested the application, I found that is has very specific technical requirements that you should review. While the developers say that you can upload it in 5 minutes, this again depends on your server provider and your confidence with setting up the application’s database. I went to an expert at my university for assistance.
Once Omeka is set up, you can add items and configure the items on the screen much as you do with a WordPress blog. Omeka is standards based and uses the Dublin Core so it is a good tool for putting museum and archival collections on line but you don’t need to know what the Dublin Core is or to have a professional staff to set up Omeka.
Go to the How To section on the Omeka.org site for instructions. They rely on the user community to help build the documentation for Omeka. This means that, if you like, you can become a participant in this community simply by sharing questions in the Forum or even themes and plug-ins with other users.
For those of you who find setting the application up on a server intimidating and don’t have a staff member, volunteer, student, board member or friend with these skills – the Center for History and New Media is aiming to provide a free or low cost hosting service for Omeka by 2010 which will make it even more like setting up a blog. However, its a great opportunity to make new connections by asking for help in your community — others may also be interested to learn about Omeka.
- What does Omeka do?
Check out examples of Omeka based Internet resources in the Showcase. Omeka’s capabilities seem to expand each week. They describe it as “a next-generation display platform” and it incorporates many features oriented around collaborative work and public participation. Omeka will work fine for those who want to mount a clearly defined pre-produced digital exhibit but that only begins to tap its potential.
You can create an open-ended online collection in Omeka and then invite others to contribute items such as data, stories, images, audio recordings, or videos. An Omeka online resource can be configured so that visitors can select from the items displayed to create their own collection or exhibit. This is fun and it’s a great resource for folks who visit the site over and over again as it expands or for teachers or students who might want to share selected items in class. Because an Omeka site can be designed to permit visitors to contribute content, you may invite visitors to expand on the information about particular items – for example, visitors might share memories of place related to a map of a neighborhood.
- What do I plan to do with Omeka?
For years, my students have researched and written papers about Dayton and Miami Valley history. They have examined transportation systems, researched houses, documented historic sites, gathered digital images, recorded interviews, and looked at work and leisure. Omeka bypasses the expensive web-design process and permits students and I to go directly online with our local history research. We will begin this process in the fall.
- What’s happening with Omeka in Ohio?
I’m hoping that community organizations like local historical societies, art galleries, and archives as well as DaytonCreate will see some potential for dynamic community history, arts and culture projects with Omeka. Mark Tebeau at Cleveland State University is experimenting with Omeka as a platform for collaborative urban history like the Euclid Corridor Project. The Ohio Humanities Council has invited Tom Scheinfeldt, managing director of the Center for History and New Media to introduce Omeka to cultural heritage area organizations in Ohio next month.
It would be great to develop a local Omeka user community. Please share what you are doing with Omeka in your classroom or here in Ohio.
[...] 13, 2008 by tellhistory I’ve written about Omeka, the Center for History and New Media’s free digital exhibit and collections application. [...]
[...] resource. (The wireframe for “Making Progress” was very cool.) I gave a detailed explanation of how Omeka works in earlier posts. Omeka will not carry away the resources and launch a dramatic exhibit with [...]