Omeka

Just before the launch of the Omeka public beta in late February, my colleagues and I had a brief conversation about metrics for the project and what would constitute success. The number we settled on for the three year lifespan of our IMLS grant was 1000 downloads. A little modest maybe—10,000 was our pie-in-the-sky figure—but considering Omeka’s primary audience consists of cultural heritage institutions (as opposed to individual end users) we thought 1000 institutions in three years would constitute a fairly big splash.

Little did we know that we would reach our goal in matter of 10 weeks. By May we had passed our target of 1000 downloads, and our current count stands at more than 1300.

At the same time, we know that number of downloads isn’t a perfect measure of success. When it comes to assessing use of the software, just as important as how many is how well. We know we have to make sure that test installations don’t sit unused. In this regard, we are encouraged by the increasingly heavy traffic in our user forums, our Google Groups developers’ list, and our “sandbox” public test installation. People are really banging on the software, pushing it to its limits, finding and fixing lots of bugs. That means they are really using it, which is exactly what we want. Yet we also have to make sure that people are using those installations to full effect. Here we are working hard to improve our documentation, to provide a comprehensive set of screencast video tutorials, and to build and release a host of new, freely downloadable design themes and plugins. Finally, we are taking the tremendous amount of feedback we have received, both through these channels and through the many presentations and workshops we have given, and incorporating it into a major rewrite of the software itself—Omeka 0.10.0 is scheduled for release in late summer or early fall 2008.

In February I said that Omeka is intended for all. Some have said this is wishful thinking, that Omeka is still too complicated to be used by the smallest of institutions or individual enthusiasts, students, or scholars. Obviously I disagree, and I would make two arguments in response.

First, a big part of our plan is a hosted version of the software. Our model is WordPress. On the one hand, people with access to a server (or an account of one of dozens of shared hosting services) and some relatively modest technical skills can set up their own Omeka installation, just as they can download and install the WordPress server application. On the other hand, beginning in 2009, people without a server or the necessary skills will be able to sign up for an account at theirname.omeka.net and we will host the software for them, just as they can sign up for a hosted blog at theirname.wordpress.com.

Second, we’re going to try. We’re not willing to write small institutions off. To this end we are working one-on-one with small institutions such as the Laurel Grove School, which with our help will publish a document-based curriculum and virtual tour using Omeka. We are also reaching out more broadly through state humanities councils. Last month, for instance, I spent a day with Margie McLellan and Mark Tebeau at the Ohio Humanities Council presenting Omeka to a group of about 50 representatives from small and medium sized cultural heritage institutions from across the state. We are now engaged in further talks with the Council about ways to connect small institutions across Ohio with experienced Omeka users and developers in the state to form partnerships that will extend their capabilities. Our hope is that we develop a model that can be reproduced in states across the country, fostering not only wider use of Omeka and more professional online exhibitions, but also new partnerships between small cultural heritage institutions, humanities councils, local web designers, state colleges and universities, and others.

We don’t expect everyone to be able to use Omeka on his or her own. But collaboration has always been key to all digital humanities and cultural heritage work. Thus we’re working directly and indirectly to facilitate new models of collaboration around Omeka, and we hope these models will let let any institution or individual, in partnership with us or a third party and using the technologies and resources we make available, build standards-based, professional-looking, rich-content online collections and exhibitions.

That’s our goal and we’re sticking to it.

[Crossposted from Found History]

I’m pleased to announce the New York Public Library has released its first online exhibition using the Omeka platform. Eminent Domain is a photographic installation chronicling the changing nature of urban space in New York City today. NYPL Labs is planning a series of projects using Omeka and its developers have become very active on the Omeka forums and dev list. I think I can speak for the entire team and say we’re very grateful for their help and impressed with the results of their first foray with Omeka.

[Crossposted from Found History]

We have returned from a very productive meeting organized by our great partners at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) in St. Paul. We worked, listened, and discussed Omeka 0.9.0 with folks from MHS, along with others from the Great Rivers Network, University of Minnesota libraries, Science Museum of Minnesota, Carleton College library, Northfield Historical Society and Public Library, Stillwater Public Library, and Hennepin County Medical Center History Museum.

Our goals for this meeting were threefold:

1. To introduce Omeka and projects built upon its base.

2. To demonstrate how Omeka works by building and shaping an archive and then pulling items together for a mock curated exhibit.

3. To discuss concerns and listen to feedback on Omeka’s user interface, overall functionality, and potential new features.

Our working group was incredibly lively and talkative, which pleased us. We took copious notes and are sharing them with the entire Omeka team.

While Omeka is flexible for many projects, we are particularly concerned with meeting the needs of smaller museums and libraries who have fascinating collections to share, but lack an inexpensive and easy way to publish them online. One workshop participant volunteers at the Stillwater Public Library and works with their special collections. She wants to digitize many of their documents and publish them in a system that is fully searchable and easy to access, because she knows that many researchers do not know the breadth of their collections. She liked using Omeka and hopes that it can provide the library with an affordable solution for accomplishing their goals.

Other participants came to the meeting with collaboration in mind. A group of libraries and museums from Northfield, MN envisions using Omeka to aggregate data stored in different collections and content management systems. Omeka not only offers this group a database for publishing their resources online, but will eventually provide plugins to make batch importing of records from different CMS’s into installations possible and easy.

The most recent report from IMLS found that adults trust museum and library websites more than other sources of information, including government sites. So, why not publish more content? We think Omeka can expand the amount of content available in the current museum- and library-sphere, and can increase the presence of medium and smaller museums and libraries who want to share their expertise and collections with eager online audiences.