Digital Humanities: Omeka

Omeka is an open source online content management system that you or a team can use to collect and exhibit digital materials.  As it is easy to use and requires relatively little technical skill, it has become a popular platform for publishing digital humanities projects. 

Omeka.net is the easiest way to set up a project, as the projects are hosted on Omeka's server.  The Free Trial Package gives you up to 500 MB of storage space to put together a project on a single site with limited themes and plugs.  Note that even though it is called a "trial" package, there is no expiration date or point at which you will be charged. If you want more plugins (including plugins to allow you to build a timeline or map), if you want to build multiple sites, and/or if you have a lot of large files you want to upload, then Omeka has various plans available starting at $35/year. Click here to access the free trial package and find information on the paid plans.

If you run a Linux operating system of your computer and meet certain other programming requirements, you can also download and run an Omeka site for free on your own server via Omeka.org.

Omeka's Forum is a great place to go with questions.  While Wiggin Library is also here to help, Omeka, like a lot of open source platforms, has a host of experienced users who are happy to provide guidance.  A lot of users have posted Omeka guides on YouTube and on the internet.  Videos and guides published by academic libraries, like these YouTube videos by University of Missouri Libraries and Mississippi State University Libraries are designed for students in mind and are especially helpful.

Omeka, along with outside apps and tools, allows you to present your files (digitized documents, photographs, sound recordings, etc.) in innovative ways to help you tell a story, make an argument, and facilitate learning. You can, for example:

• Upload files in order to get the public involved in actively learning about and contributing to their community with a crowd-sourcing project, like the University of Iowa Libraries' DIY History project.
• Create interactive homework assignments for students, as detailed by the John Hopkins University's The Innovative Instructor Blog.
• Map out your files geographically, like Cleveland Historical has done in their Story Map and how From farms to freeways: Women's memories of Western Sydney has done in their Map (this feature is NOT available in the free trial version, but you can still make a similar map and put it in a link with StoryMapJS).
• Map out your files chronologically onto a timeline, like the Black Liberation 1969 Archive (this feature is NOT available in the free trial version, but you can still make a similar timeline and put it in a link with TimelineJS).

Check out Omeka's Getting Started Guide for more ideas and examples.

Also, be sure to check out the Wiggin Library's Omeka test page.  This is a practice exhibit set up using the free trial package and documents obtained and used (with the copyright holders' permission!) from the Databases of Digitized Sources tab and Wikimedia Commons, a good source for finding Creative Commons Licensed images.

Once you pick a package and sign up, you will need to begin your project by finding and uploading items or collections.  In Omeka, an item is a file or set of files of a single work, whether text, still image, audio recording, etc., and a collection is a group of related items uploaded collectively. When you upload an item or collection, you will be prompted to fill in metadata for the item/collection following Dublin Core standards (for more on metadata and Dublin Core, see the box below).  You can fill in as few or as many metadata fields as you want, but the more information you enter, the more searchable the items/collections will be!

Similarly, you can also enter tags (keywords/phrases) for your items.  The more tags you enter, and the more common tags you enter, the more cross-connected your items and collections will be.

Once you have uploaded items and/or collections, you can make an exhibit.  An exhibit in Omeka is a manually-created group that you make from your previously-uploaded items and collections.  You can have an item (or collection) in multiple exhibits, but you cannot put an item into multiple collections.  In compiling an exhibit, you have the option to include text commentary to each item/collection.  The exhibits function importantly allows you to present your items/collections in a specific order that you find most useful.

When you upload an item into Omeka, you will be prompted to fill in metadata following Dublin Core standards.  Metadata is information about the item (Who created it?  What is it called?  What language is it in? etc.) that is used to classify it.  Dublin Core (DC) is a standardized set of fifteen metadata properties that librarians, archivists, museums, collectors, etc. use to describe items in their collection.  These fifteen elements are (in the order given by Omeka): Title, Subject, Description, Creator, Source, Publisher, Date, Contributor, Rights, Relation, Format, Language, Type, Identifier, Coverage.  For the standard definitions of each of the fifteen elements, consult DC's Reference Description page.

When filling in values for these elements, try to fill in as many as possible, but note that if the item does not have any property fitting that element (for example, if there are no other named contributors), then you can skip that element.  Many items will not have values for all fifteen DC elements.  Note, too, that if you got the item from a database, archives, or museum (with their permission!) they may already have provided values for these elements.

You can enter multiple values in for each element, as, for example, there might be multiple creators or subjects.  Type in a single value in a text box.  Then, click on the Add Input button on the left below the DC element to create new text boxes to enter second, third, etc. values.

This metadata will help you classify, present, and study your items.  It is therefore important to be consistent in how you type in metadata.  Make sure you enter values, like people's names, the same way each time.  If you for example have three documents by a creator named Jon Snow, but you enter the creator of one as "Snow, Jon," the creator of the second as "Jon Snow," and the creator of the third as "J. Snow," then the computer will not recognize that these three items all had the same author.

Beyond that, Omeka will also prompt you to select from a set list of Item Type Metadata (is the item text? a still image? a sound recording? etc.) that may prompt you to include more metadata.  Again, fill in what you can.