Nice Outfit recently designed an online collecting site, Catawba River Docs, for the Light Factory and Cultural Heritage & Museums using Omeka.

The web site complements a physical show, River Docs, that showcases work by contemporary artists who were asked to document their personal interactions with Catawba River over the course of one year through their art. Nice Outfit designed an online exhibit using Omeka and the contribution plugin to collect and display stories and images submitted by the general public representing their relationship with the river and region.

Recently, an unknown contributor uploaded a photograph of workers building the Catawba Dam around 1900. This person found the image in a family photo album, scanned it, and uploaded it to the archive. How many others have photographs like this saved in an album that will never be shared with a large audience? This example demonstrates how Omeka can help cultural institutions engage communities and help them save and construct their own histories.

CHNM is dedicated to democratizing history. Catawba River Docs is an exciting example of how others can do the same using Omeka.

The votes are in, and the Omeka dev team has been chosen to present at February’s code4lib conference in Portland, Oregon. Code4lib exists to foster community and share information among those interested in the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future.

Jeremy Boggs and I will show attendees how Omeka works, and how to extend it with plugins and custom themes. We’ll also explore the possibilities for migrating and publishing existing collections from other management systems using Omeka.

The Omeka Dev Team can relax this weekend, because they just finished RC4.

This version is faster than earlier releases and offers an RSS feed for new public items; a Dropbox plugin for batch uploading files; and an updated collecting plugin. As we mentioned in the last post, RC4 does not support the contribution plugin packaged with RC3. If you want to use that plugin, please upgrade to RC4 and use the contribution plugin that comes with this release. For information on using the Dropbox, please visit the plugin’s page at http://omeka.org/extras/dropbox/. Finally, the themes packaged with RC4 have been updated to include an auto-detect link for the items RSS feed.

We hope you enjoy your weekend and that you continue to explore what Omeka can do for you.

The Omeka Team is working hard to release Omeka’s RC4 in a few short days. Those running earlier versions will be able to upgrade in a few minutes to take advantage of the new features, such as an RSS feed that will allow your users to stay in touch with new content posted on your site.

Some changes for this release include:

• RC4 does not support the contribution plugin from RC3. If you want to use that plugin, please upgrade to RC4 and use the contribution plugin that comes with this release.
• “Dropbox” plugin allows for batch uploading of files

If you will be installing Omeka for the first time, be sure your server is ready with the following:

• PHP 5.2.2 or later, with either PDO or mysqli
• MySQL 5
• Imagemagick for image resizing

Keep your eyes out for RC4.