Today is as good a day as any to revisit my dormant blog, because Omeka 0.9.0, CHNM’s free and open source software for publishing collections and exhibitions online, is public and popular (over 150 downloads)! I am so proud to be a part of this project, because not only do we have really smart and innovative people working together on this, but our goal to make affordable and polished websites available to museums, historical societies, academia, individuals, et al, is becoming a reality.
For about five years I have been tracking and analyzing how museums use the web to display and share content, and, as most of you know, history museums have been woefully behind in producing attractive, content-rich sites. The primary barriers have been money and lack of trained staff. After 10 years of working with various public history institutions, CHNM found that even well-funded, national organizations experience difficultly mounting inexpensive interactive online exhibitions. Omeka aims to break down those barriers by allowing institutions and individuals to share their collections and expertise with the world, and to help build communities around their objects.
Since Dan Cohen did such a great job introducing his readers to Omeka, I will send you to his Feb 20 post to read more. When you’re finished, head over to the download page and start playing.
Omeka features:
• Basic themes that are easy to adapt with simple CSS changes
• Exhibit building with 12 basic page layouts
• Tagging for items and exhibits
• RSS feed for new items
• Drop box plug-in for batch adding items
• Contribution plug-in for collecting items from visitors
• COinS plug-in making all Omeka content readable by Zotero
• Geolocation plug-in for displaying items on a map
• Bilingual plug-in for adding language fields to item metadata
• Site notes plug-in for administrators to leave instructions for users
System Requirements:
• Linux operating system
• Apache server (with mod_rewrite enabled)
• MySQL 5.0 or greater
• PHP 5.2.x or greater
• ImageMagick
Enable users to publish web content with a system that is low-cost and easy-to-use.
Provide users with a standards-based, interoperable system that allows them to share and use digital content in multiple contexts.
Facilitate users, in particular cultural institutions, engaging their publics and building communities around objects and primary sources.
Art by day, Crazy Videos by night
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Comment by george mike — April 26, 2008 @ 12:58 am
The Omeka project looks fantastic…
I’m waiting for the right opportunity to put this software to good use. I’ve got a meeting with Eastside Community Heritage on Thursday when I’ll bring Omeka up as the ideal CMS for their purposes…
Comment by Andy Walpole — June 7, 2008 @ 9:45 am