Omeka software for museum exhibits and collections

From: Sheila Brennan sbrennan@gmu.edu

Greetings,

Below you will find some information announcing the public beta release ofthe Center for History and New Media's latest software project, Omeka(http://omeka.org) -- the free and open-source software that providesmuseums, historical societies, libraries and individuals with an easy to useplatform for publishing collections and creating attractive,standards-based, interoperable online exhibits. We're very excited about the software and building a strong community ofusers and developers, and we hope that some of you decide to download it andtry working with it at your institution. We are very interested in feedback, so please send an email(omeka.support@gmail.com) or log into our Forums to comment and discuss yourexperiences with Omeka.
Thanks for your time.
Sheila A. Brennan

Senior Digital History AssociateCenter for History and New MediaGeorge Mason University703-879-8366sbrennan@gmu.eduhttp://chnm.gmu.edu The Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and theMinnesota Historical Society are pleased to announce the public beta releaseof Omeka , the free and open-source software that providesmuseums, historical societies, libraries and individuals with an easy-to-useplatform for publishing collections and creating attractive,standards-based, interoperable online exhibits. Omeka is designed to satisfythe needs of cultural institutions that lack technical staffs and largebudgets. Bringing Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to small museum,historical society, and library websites, Omeka fosters the kind of userinteraction and participation that is central to the mission of thosecultural institutions. Omeka's development is the result of ten years ofdigital public history work, experimentation, and technology development onprojects such as The September 11 Digital Archive <911digitalarchive.org>and Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators of the NationalMuseum of American History .

Omeka is funded by theInstitute of Museum and Library Services and the Alfred P. SloanFoundation . The theme-switching process and plug-in architecture at the heart of Omekawill be familiar to users who are accustomed to working with popularblogging software, but Omeka includes a number of features that are directedspecifically at public history users and other humanists. First, the systemfunctions using an archive built on a Dublin Core metadata scheme, allowingit to be interoperable with existing content management systems and allother Omeka installations. Second, Omeka includes a process for buildingnarrative exhibits with flexible layouts. These two features alone providecultural institutions with the power to increase their web presence and toshowcase the interpretive expertise of curators, archivists, and historians.But Omeka's plug-in architecture also allows users to do much more to extendtheir exhibits to include maps, timelines, and folksonomies, and it providesthe "hooks" and APIs (application programming interfaces) that open-sourcedevelopers and designers need to add additional functionality to suit theirown institutions' particular needs. In turn, a public plug-ins and themesdirectory will allow these community developers to donate their new toolsback to the rest of Omeka users. The Omeka team is eager to build a largeand robust community of open-source developers around this suite oftechnologies. Available in private beta since September, Omeka has already accrued over150 test users, and a number of successful projects are using the software: The Light Factory and Cultural Heritage & Museums in South Carolina areusing Omeka for an online collecting site to accompany their physical show,River Docs <http://www.catawbariverdocs.com/>, in which contemporary artistsdocumented their personal interactions with the Catawaba River over thecourse of a year. Omeka has enabled the curators to collect images andreflections from the public, extending the reach of the physical exhibit anddeepening the connection of the visitors to the project. The New York Public Library is testing Omeka for an online overview of itsmost popular collections, Treasures of the New York Public Library<http://labs.nypl.org/labs-projects/exhibits/>. Virginia Tech has used Omeka to collect remembrances and memorials of thesad events of last Spring, The April 16 Archive .Omeka's flexible design and architecture enabled the launch of this sitewithin days of the tragic shootings. Other projects using Omeka include:Object of History: Behind the Scenes with the Curators at the NationalMuseum of American History Hurricane Digital Memory Bank A Look Back at Braddock District

Omeka is now available for download and includes thefollowing features:Basic themes that are easy to adapt with simple CSS changes (more themesavailable at )Exhibit building with 12 basic page layoutsTagging for items and exhibitsRSS feed for new items Drop box plug-in for batch adding items (available at)

Contribution plug-in for collecting items from visitorsCOinS plug-in making all Omeka content readable by Zotero Geolocation plug-in for displaying items on a mapBilingual plug-in for adding language fields to item metadataSite notes plug-in for administrators to leave instructions for users

System Requirements:Linux operating systemApache server (with mod_rewrite enabled)MySQL 5.0 or greaterPHP 5.2.x or greaterImageMagick