Omeka

We showed off Omeka .10b to a sizable crowd who gathered for the Saturday case study showcase at the Museum Computer Network‘s annual conference in Washington, DC. Museum professionals from across the country were eager to see us demonstrate the administrative interface, especially the exhibit builder, and hear about our future plans to build translators that will import records from existing collections management systems into Omeka.

For those who did not get a chance to see us demonstrate Omeka .10b, take a look at the Omeka sandbox: http://omeka.org/codex/Try_Omeka_Before_Installing. After 15 minutes of tinkering, you will be able to add or edit an item, create a short exhibit, and change the public design theme.

Today we’re very excited to announce the general release of Omeka 0.10b and the relaunch of a redesigned Omeka.org.

Omeka 0.10b incorporates many of the changes you asked for: an unqualified Dublin Core metadata schema and fully extensible element sets to accommodate interoperability with digital repository software and collections management systems; elegant reworkings of our theme API and plugin API to make add-on development more intuitive and more powerful; a new, even more user friendly look for the administrative interface; and a new and improved Exhibit Builder. While the changes are extensive and represent a next-to-last step forward toward a 1.0 release in early 2009, existing users of Omeka should have little trouble switching to 0.10b. New users should have even less trouble getting started. Meanwhile, visitors to Omeka.org will find a new look, a more intuitive information architecture, easily browsable themes and plugins directories, improved documentation and user support, and new ways to get involved in the Omeka community.

In the coming weeks and months, the Omeka team will turn to the hard work of tying up loose ends for 1.0, building new plugins, designing new themes, and building data migration tools for CONTENTdm, D-Space, Fedora, The Museum System, Past Perfect, and other repository and collections management software. We will also continue to improve our documentation and host a series of informal “play dates” for existing or aspiring Omeka users and developers. Later in the new year, we will begin work on a hosted web service, to give users a choice between running Omeka on their own servers or signing up for an account at Omeka.net.

Many thanks to our committed user and developer communities for helping to make this new release happen. We’re looking forward to your feedback in the forums, on the dev list, on Twitter, and on Flickr, and to your help in spreading the word about the new Omeka.

(Download press release (.pdf) / Download flyer (.pdf))

As we ramp up testing of Omeka 0.10, there’s one 0.9.x release left to announce: the OKAPI package. Open Knowledge and the Public Interest at Berkeley has been testing and using Omeka for several months, culminating with the development of a downloadable “package” of Omeka that bundles together their custom theme, plugin modifications and additions to the 0.9.2 version. Both the theme and plugins have dependencies, which requires them to be packaged together. However, we’re working together to make the theme and plugins compatible with the upcoming 0.10 version of Omeka to eventually be released as separate components.

The Okapi theme enables Omeka users without expert web design skills to create polished multimedia exhibits and collections. The home page features a cinematic 980×500 pixel main image and up to four featured exhibits. Exhibit pages include new layouts for articles, themed collections and embedded multimedia. The bundled Multimedia Links plugin enables embedding of HTML code, Flash video (flv), and many other formats supported by the included JWplayer. The theme displays accessible Flash-based typography and is W3C CSS and XHTML compliant. The Okapi theme, Multimedia Links plugin and exhibit layouts were developed by independent developer Kristin “Chach” Sikes in collaboration with Open Knowledge and the Public Interest.

We’re excited that Omeka is being used at Berkeley, and look forward to more great Omeka plugins and themes from them in the future. Special thanks to Noah Wittman at Berkeley for spearheading this initiative. Go download the OKAPI package today. Documentation is included in the zip file.