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Omeka: Omeka Classic

Websites such as The Days of Walter Harding and Open Valley show how omeka can be integrated into a classroom learning project. ReEnvisioning Japan is a large digital archive of thousands of postcards, books, sheet music, film, and ephemera relating to Japan in the first half of the 20th Century. It shows how Omeka can be customized to show films, sheet music with play-along recordings, and other features. The Sibley Watson Digital Archive integrates images of letters alongside interactive transcripts. Searching for Ward's includes three-dimensional models of scientific specimens produced by Ward Scientific at the turn of the 20th century.

Adding Items

You can add any type of digital object to your Omeka site (images, videos, audio, pdfs, etc). These can be born-digital objects or digital surrogates for physical objects (e.g. a photo of a sculpture).

add an item button in omeka

  1. Click on "Add an Item" - this will bring up the form for you to enter metadata about the item.
  2. Fill in as many of the metadata fields as you can for your item - these metadata fields are what make your items findable!
  3. Omeka uses a metadata standard called "Dublin Core." The fields are vague and flexible by design. 
    1. Use the Omeka Guide to Dublin Core or the Dublin Core User Guide to learn more about how to best use these terms.
  4. You can set more specific information about your item type in the next tab, "Item Type Metadata."
  5. Upload your file(s) in the next tab - you can upload multiple files if they are all part of the same "object" (e.g., if you have multiple images showing a physical object from various angles).
  6. Finally, add some tags under the last tab to help users find your item.

When you click the button to add your item, make sure you check the "Public" checkbox - otherwise, visitors to your site won't be able to see your item!

Creating Exhibits

In order to build exhibits on your site, make sure you have the plugin "Exhibit Builder" installed.

Once you start to build an exhibit, you'll be taken to a form where you can enter some metadata about your exhibit. At the bottom of this form, you can start adding pages to your exhibit.

There are several choices for exhibit page layouts, ranging from all text, to text with an image or two, all the way to a page of all images. These "images" on the page can be actual images from your collections, or they can be thumbnails representing other item types (e.g. audio, video, pdf).

The best way to build your exhibit is to plan it out before you start building. Consider:

  • What story are you trying to tell in your exhibit?
  • How will you display contextual information?
  • How will you juxtapose different items?

Your exhibit can bring in any item on your site - they don't have to be from a single collection. Items can only belong to one collection, but they may be displayed in many exhibits.

Omeka Sites Around the Web

Add the phrase "Proudly Powered by Omeka" surrounded by quotes to your search query to find Omeka-powered sites which touch on your search topic.

Websites such as The Days of Walter Harding and Open Valley show how omeka can be integrated into a classroom learning project. ReEnvisioning Japan is a large digital archive of thousands of postcards, books, sheet music, film, and ephemera relating to Japan in the first half of the 20th Century. It shows how Omeka can be customized to show films, sheet music with play-along recordings, and other features. The Sibley Watson Digital Archive integrates images of letters alongside interactive transcripts. Searching for Ward's includes three-dimensional models of scientific specimens produced by Ward Scientific at the turn of the 20th century.