I am volunteering to migrate genealogical data from my personal website to a website used by the historical society. They are 'steering' me towards using Omeka / Dublin Core (of which I now know how to spell!!), but I question if this is appropriate for data that is contained in lists -- like census records, obituaries, names found in deeds, marriages, etc.
Myself, as a researcher, I want to be able to search for a persons name and find related information -- I ususlly don't care about the other names in that list.
I realize I can use Omeka and have attachments of things like images of census records, or Excel files with transcribed names, etc.. However, it seems cumbersome to have to open an Excel file to see info on a surname, when I could just as easily have the information displayed on an html page (accessed by either a search or index entry).
Appreciate your thoughts on the best approach to handling items like lists!
I would say it can be appropriate, trevil, depending on how you would want to transfer the data from lists. You could use the CSV Import plugin to pull in a csv file (exported from Excel) into Omeka, where each row would be an Item.
So, its important to decide if you want the entire list is a single item with its own metadata, or if you want each row or record in that list to be its own Item with its own metadata. You can do both with Omeka, but it does create a different way of saving and displaying the data. Neither is wrong, but they do provide two different user experiences for the data.
Thank you Jeremy. I tried to play with a csv import, but it appears the plugin is not installed (or available) on the site I am testing with. Since I already ran into another issue relating to a server parameter setting, I have decided to follow the instructions on how to install VMWare and Omeka on a stand-alone workstation. This way I will only destroy my world and not everyone elses! Thanks again!