Omeka. iskills Workshop February 16, Leslie Barnes, Digital Scholarship Librarian

Transcription

1 Omeka iskills Workshop February 16, 2018 Leslie Barnes, Digital Scholarship Librarian

2 A guided tour of the platform The history and context of the platform Creating accounts Basic functionalities Site management Creating items, collections, and exhibits Service development

3 What is Omeka? Content Management System (CMS) Intuitive interface: easy-to-use Plugins enable multiple functionalities Batch uploading Metadata extensions Visualization Free, hosted version at omeka.net

4 Who made Omeka? Small libraries and cultural heritage institutions Limited IT infrastructure and budgets Collect and exhibit digital materials

5 Broad and Active user base

6 Lots of plugins Developed by CHNM and other major contributors. Of particular note (to us at UTL): Neatline (Scholars Lab) IIIF Toolkit (UofT) CSV Import (CHNM) Exhibit Builder (CHNM) OAI-PMH (CHNM)

7 Omeka.net Demonstration 1. Overview: User Roles, Settings, Actions 2. Creating a Collection 3. Creating an Item from a file 4. CSV Import 5. Creating an Exhibit in Omeka 6. Adding content to an Exhibit

8 Make Accounts or Login

9 CSV file

10 Administration: Users Super Admin Can edit all items and exhibits, make items public No access to settings Contributor Access to EVERYTHING, including security settings Can create items, but cannot make them public Cannot edit other people s exhibits Cannot edit other people s items Researcher Can sign in to view private items Cannot create or edit items

11 Administration: Appearance Choose and configure theme Edit navigation Potentially really powerful Can help guide users and shape experience Settings Image size Pay particular attention to the two bottom buttons Show Empty Elements Show Element Set Headings

12 Items: The Building Blocks Of Exhibits Aggregation of metadata, files, and tags All of these are optional Recommend at least minimal metadata Omeka accepts a lot of file types SAVE OFTEN

13 Metadata: Dublin Core (DC) Developed by OCLC to describe digital resources Dublin, OH (not Ireland) 15 core elements Intended to be less medium-specific than other standards (e.g. Creator not Author ) How you use metadata in Omeka depends on your use case

14 Item Types Gives you greater flexibility with metadata Especially useful if you are focused on creating a catalog Allows you to entirely do away with DC You can create a setting in which DC elements that have nothing in them do not appear

15 Creating Collections Very similar to creating items DC metadata Items can only belong to one collection

16 Environment - UTL s resources Have developers Have limited designer support Have some librarian support Active and engaged users (potential for self-service)

17 Who our our users? Library staff and Faculty Make online exhibits easily Faculty Use software to create collections in the classroom

18 Service!= Platform Because of the different use cases and some of these limitations we decided to create two services that rely on Omeka: One central installation with multiple exhibits for librarians and faculty seeking to create exhibits Single, temporary installations for faculty who would be using Omeka in the classroom

19 Omeka s Architecture Doesn t have multi-sites (one central theme) Can host multiple exhibits with their own themes This means we might need to hide some navigation options (developer time) Exhibit A Central Installation Exhibit B Exhibit C Exhibit D

20 Services Exhibits UofT Complements Collections UofT Self-service model Simple UofT theme Pedagogical Year long installations Used in classrooms with many accounts, unique configurations

21 What questions do we ask? User needs and use case(s) Environmental constraints Long(er) term: sustainability and scalability Services can we build How do platforms shape services?

22 User Permissions Crucial to thinking about how to manage installations Who are your users How many users do you expect to have on any one installation? Do you expect conflicts? What are the end results meant to be

23 Longer-term Considerations How many installations/users can we support? How do we coordinate and manage them? Can these services grow? Can we get data in easily? Can we get data out in an interoperable format? Do these services meet user needs? Do we need to customize the software?

24 Drawbacks and limitations Limited ability to create or alter themes without a developer Necessary limitations of CMS s Not a preservation platform

25 Benefits Active user base and forums Open source (you can customize if you have developers) Lots of plugins Easy to use

26 Questions and Contact

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31 Two Cases: Digital Pedagogy Experiments Case 1: Undergrads creating individual exhibits Solution: Each is a contributor Case 2: Graduate students creating group exhibits (Imperfect) Solution: Each student has a contributor account, and each group has a communal contributor account

32 Links to Item

33 Creating a Collection

34 Items in a collection

35 Adding an Item from a file

36 Creating an Exhibit

37 Adding Content to an Exhibit

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