Omeka

OVERVIEW

Omeka is a free, open-source digital publishing platform from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Digital collections, archives, oral histories, and essays can be organized and shared as online exhibits, tagged with standard archival metadata. According to the Omeka website, “Omeka is a Swahili word meaning to display or lay out wares; to speak out; to spread out; to unpack” [1]. Archivists, librarians, educators, historians, curators, and others will find the platform user friendly, flexible, and collaborative, while instructors can use Omeka to create class projects and allow students to experience both source analysis and web design. Premade design themes may be used, and customized themes can be created from scratch or by modifying existing ones. Items can be organized into collections with narrative sidebars. The tool is compliant with section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and supports Dublin Core metadata.

Users can download Omeka for free to install on their own servers or use a hosted version on Omeka.net. Hosted options allow users with no technical expertise to use Omeka. Five hosted options are available: Basic (free) includes 500 megabytes (MB) of storage, 1 site, 15 plugins, and 5 themes; Plus ($49.00/year) includes 1 gigabyte (GB) of storage, 2 sites, 21 plugins, and unlimited themes; Silver ($99.00/year) offers 2 GB of storage, 5 sites, 28 plugins, and unlimited themes; Gold ($299.00 per year) gives 5 GB of storage, 10 sites, and unlimited plugins and themes; Platinum ($999/year) is designed for institutions and includes 25 GB storage and unlimited sites, plugins, and themes. Third-party commercial hosting is also an option. Services like Reclaim Hosting and Dreamhost offer one-click installation with a custom domain name.

FEATURES

The basic functions of Omeka are uploading digital objects, adding metadata, and organizing objects into collections or exhibits for public display. An object usually consists of an image with its associated Dublin Core metadata, but Omeka can be used to exhibit almost any kind of digital object: image, sound, video, text (such as a portable document format [PDF] file), or others, with a 2 MB size limit per file. Any Omeka item may include multiple files. Files are described by Dublin Core metadata, with elements customizable on a site-wide basis and by item type. The default item types (image, text, person, physical object, website, data set, and many others) cover most use cases, but new types can be added. Visual elements can be customized, including colors, design, fonts, and header images; using preinstalled themes can simplify the design process.

As with WordPress, Firefox, or Chrome, plugins can extend the functionality of Omeka. For example, plugins can connect Omeka to other sites, allowing you to upload audio files to SoundCloud, import images from Flickr, or auto-post to Tumblr. Other plugins provide additional metadata-related features like controlled vocabulary enhancements, metadata harvesters, COinS data to allow saving items to Zotero, or Dublin Core extended properties. Still others add visual enhancements like slideshow carousels, simple web pages, and more extensive exhibit creation.

Of particular note is the Neatline suite of plugins. These allow Omeka items to be plotted on a map (Google Maps, OpenStreetMap, or custom image-based maps) with geolocation data and entered into a timeline. Neatline-enhanced exhibits can be browsed geographically or chronologically in an interactive display.

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

Omeka requires a server running LAMP: the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database system, and the PHP programming language. ImageMagick image manipulation software, also free and open source, is needed for resizing images. Only modest server hardware is needed: 1 GB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor is recommended, with necessary hard drive space depending on the size of the digital exhibits [2].

INSTALLATION AND USABILITY

Like WordPress or any other content management system (CMS), Omeka requires the ability to install software to a web server. Installation is not difficult, and step-by-step instructions are available at Omeka.org.

Planning an exhibit requires some decisions on the part of the creators: specifics about metadata vocabulary, thematic or chronological organizations, and so on. Once these decisions are made, implementing them in Omeka is straightforward.

Entering items requires no technical expertise or digital project experience and can be done by anyone after some basic instruction. For example, the authors worked with a class of first-year college students who were able to create impressive displays with some brief training and a short handout for later reference (Figure 1). Uploading files is as simple as clicking a standard upload button, and multiple files can be added to the same item; for example, to display alternate views of a physical object or to include text and images together. Metadata are entered via a simple web form, and the Omeka implementation of Dublin Core is flexible enough to accommodate whatever vocabulary the curators wish to use.

Figure 1.

An example of Dublin Core entry fields

Once items are uploaded and metadata are assigned, items are tagged as related to a collection and can then be organized into exhibits. Narrative text also can be added. Once installed, maintaining an Omeka exhibit is, roughly speaking, no more difficult than maintaining and updating a WordPress site. A librarian or archivist could easily maintain a hosted Omeka instance with no specialized technical skills.

DOCUMENTATION AND SUPPORT

Omeka is open-source software, so staff must be willing to develop expertise to support the system on their own, unless they purchase one of the aforementioned support options. Fortunately, ample documentation and an active user community make self-support easier. The Omeka documentation page constitutes a detailed start-to-finish user manual that covers topics from installation to use cases to technical minutiae. Users are encouraged to share their designs and offer support to other users via forums and email discussion lists. Tutorials and videos are also available.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Omeka has the advantage of being specifically designed for ease of use by librarians, archivists, and other information professionals. Other products are available, such as CONTENTdm or DSpace, that can serve as repositories for displaying digital objects, but few also provide the ability to create curated, annotated exhibits. Other CMSs like WordPress or Drupal could certainly be used to create digital exhibits, but these are general-purpose tools designed to fit many potential needs. Omeka is a specialty tool designed for one purpose and as such has richer features for exhibitors' needs. A general-use CMS, for example, would need extensive customization to incorporate Dublin Core metadata.

SUMMARY

Omeka is free or inexpensive, flexible and extensible, and suitable for a variety of digital exhibit needs. Server installation requires some technical expertise, but hosted solutions exist that can obviate that step, if necessary. Omeka is not difficult to learn, and a web design team is not needed to create appealing exhibits. Librarians and archivists can become users or even developers depending on their commitment and desire, thanks to Omeka's open-source license. Inspiration can be found from the dozens of examples available at https://omeka.org/showcase.