2015-08-20

assessmemnt

events tracking

• Part of our assessment project (for ourselves & the library)
• DSG has used Podio to create an Events form
• Amanda demos

consulting

• Library likes to keep track of how much we consult w/ other departments
• Podio also has a new form that Amanda has created (w/ Sarah's help) to track consultation

mentoring

• LM interested in programming topics
• SB in XML, XPath, XSLT, TEI, RELAX NG, etc.
• AC ditto (including XQuery)
• BS geo-spatial
• HC © & fair use; open access

omeka under the hood

• content management system
• "wordpress for museums"
• was used on Our Marathon
• ECDA started in it, then went elsewhere
• DRS does some of same stuff better
• May be a presence on campus where students being asked to gather & curate
• Hx dept interested

DSG & Omeka

Our Marathon

• using old version of Omeka
• highly customized
• Reclaim hosting has a one-click install
• (Ryan C. uses that service)

structure

• has items, which have metadata
• uses basic DC metadata; also has item types (w/ additional metadata for some kinds of types, which Our Marathon did not use)
• plugin for extended
• collections is a set of items
• item can only be in 1 collection
• Omeka does not have sets
• Omeka does have exhibits, more curational than sets of DRS
• also has tags

search

• capability less than optimal and has a somewhat icky interface
• e.g., will not search on words ≤ 3 chars long, so "red sox" …

exhibit

• An exhibit has pages
• A method of hand-creating a page that draws on items
• Various options for arrangement of text & images with a drag-and-drop interface
• Seems you can either link to an item or suck it in
• PY reports exhibits used to be very buggy; JM's experience is not so buggy
• Omeka originally designed for 1 person to be creating site, so when multiple folks work on it there are problems
• Simple Pages are just blank slate for exhibit page, rather than a template (or, perhaps, a blank template … :-)

neatline

• exhibit-building plug-in
• lets people tell stories using maps & timelines
• often require lots of customization
• can use Google Maps templates
• create records that link items (and their metadata) to things on your map
• by default all your metdata pops up
• JM describes a method of getting around this problem (that I did not catch)
• Our Marathon hacked neatline a bit
• Basic neatline template is pretty simplistic — image on top, text underneath

summary

• JM: "I'm not in love with Omeka"
• Has some interesting capabilities for creating certain types of sites; i.e. is useful.
• There are forums for support.
• JM recommends DSG have guidelines on how to use Omeka in a manner that makes ingestion into DRS easier
• Mostly useful for class projects; public digital hx, etc.