Omeka S – a brief introduction

May 16, 2023 Robert O'Toole Digital Humanties, Software overview 0

Image of a manuscript
Camera Ricoh Imaging Company/ Ltd K-S2 from Pixabay

This article was written by the IDG Technology for Research team at Warwick. It provides an overview of the Omeka S platform for creating and managing online collection web sites. The team are able to provide advice on Omeka S and many other DH tools and techniques, and can help academics to design and implement funded projects.

Humanists often want to share collections online. For example, diaries or art works. You could use some general-purpose technology such as a WordPress site or google photos album. However, these technologies lack features suitable for a digital collection or exhibition of items from the humanities. We may want to publish our items as linked open data using industry standards and create an interesting exhibition which guides our visitors through the collection.

Omeka S is a web publishing platform created with humanists and libraries in mind. There is a whole directory full of Omeka S websites, including the Papers for the War Department (1784 – 1800) and the 1918 Flu Pandemic in Utah (see figures 1 and 2). Both websites present interesting objects (paper, news articles, etc.) on web pages which exhibitions, allowing readers to better understand the topic and explore the resources. Individual items in the collections can be described using excellent metadata standards such as Dublin Core, all created using a simple web interface.

Figure 1. Papers of the War Department Omeka S site
Figure 1. Papers of the War Department Omeka S site
Figure 2. 1918 Flu Epidemic in Utah Omeka S site
Figure 2. 1918 Flu Epidemic in Utah Omeka S site

In this DHAL shorts session, we will consider Omeka S as a solution for sharing digital objects via online archives. Why is Omeka S a good option? What are the advantages of sharing digital objects using a web interface? Are there any disadvantages? Is there a place for creating or using online archives in your research?

The design of Omeka S is intended to help you create and share a selection of objects online. You are essentially building an online database of resources to share with academics and the public. First, collect your items. If these items are pictures, then the Tropy program may be helpful. Second, upload these items to Omeka S, often using the web interface, and describe them using vocabularies. Then you can organise these items into collections and create pages for websites.

We will use the Omeka S sandbox to try out Omeka S. You can access the sandbox by going to this website and clicking on ‘Go to the sandbox’. The sandbox environment is an install of Omeka S which the developers have provided, and you can log into the sandbox using the username omekasdemo1@example.com and passwordomekasdemo1. The data on the Omeka S sandbox will be reset every few days so you can explore and edit the data knowing your changes are temporary.

The sandbox hosts several sites. You can see the different sites by clicking on the Sites button on the left of the admin menu. Clicking on the View Public Site button (the square with an arrow) in the Sites menu (see Figure 3) will open the site webpage and show you how it would look to a visitor (see Figure 4). For example, the site in Figure 4 is about the National Mall in Washington D.C.. The site provides rich context about the mall, such as ‘Who takes care of the Mall?’, and interactive maps linking to different items of interest.

Figure 3. Sites hosted on the Omeka S sandbox.
Figure 3. Sites hosted on the Omeka S sandbox.
Figure 4. Mail History site hosted on the Omeka S sandbox.
Figure 4. Mail History site hosted on the Omeka S sandbox.

Items are at the core of the site. Each item will have a dedicated page (e.g., the John Paul Jones Memorial) and be described by metadata (Title, Description, etc.). The site therefore is both an exhibition providing a contextual journey through the content (a virtual museum of sorts) and a scholarly database for exploring objects of academic interest. Though beyond the scope of this session, Omeka S provides a computational way to access the database which takes full advantage of the rich metadata describing items.

Both managing items and creating sites made much easier by the online Omeka S interface. You can view items in the Items section of the admin site (see figure 5) and pages from within the pages section of the specific site. It takes a little while to get used to the interface but, once you are familiar, it provides a straightforward way for you to share your online collections with the world and, importantly, fellow academics. It is often easiest to learn and appreciate these systems by exploration, so please do play around with the sandbox and think about how you would use Omeka S for your own work.

Figure 5. Items in the Omeka S sandbox
Figure 5. Items in the Omeka S sandbox

There are lots of resources available to help you. The recording of the Digital Matters workshop titled Introduction to Omeka S is rather useful and provides a basic introduction and the Omeka S User Manual is very readable. There are guides and links available from University library page including the University of California, University of Illinois, and the University of Pennsylvania. One should note that Omeka is an older platform whereas Omeka S (where the S stands for Semantic) is a different application and the most current.

Welcome to the world of digital exhibitions. The session should help you to be more familiar with the role of Omeka S in sharing online collections. If you are interested in using Omeka S then please do get in contact the IDG Technology for Research team.

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