Hi,
We are about to create an exhibit with historical photographs and i'm wondering how to approach this in Omeka.
The photographs scans of originals in print. They are all focused on one place (a physical location).
I thought of two paths:
(1) Create an ITEM for the physical location, and enter photographs as FILES attached to the item;
(2) Create an ITEM for each photograph, where each photograph would have its ITEM and FILE metadata.
I wonder what the best path is (best practice) considering that both ITEM and FILE can have DC metadata.
As far as creating the exhibition goes (2) is better, as I can construct it quite easily by selecting the individual items = photos. But considering parismony (1) seems better as we'd have less redudnant metadata.
Any suggestions? Thanks!
Omeka deliberately leaves things very open, so I wouldn't say either one is necessarily better than the other.
That said, the choice does make a difference to what an "Item" represents in your site, and therefore what the focus and purpose of it are. In option (1), an Item is actually the location, which would make your site all about the places. The DC metadata for an Item would be about the place, so the DC title would be something like the town name, and DC creator would be kinda weird.
In (2), the Items are the photographs, putting the focus of the site on the photographs themselves.
So, the choice is really about matching what an Item is or represents to the purpose and goals of your site and exhibits.
Speaking of the exhibits--you can add the same item to an exhibit page more than once, and select a different image for display on each one, so the exhibit building work might not be that different between the two options.