Examples

The following page is meant to help people new to Omeka get a sense of how others have used Omeka Classic for projects, and help you read an Omeka Classic website to understand what choices the site builders made.

Case study

Histories of the National Mall interprets the National Mall's rich past by offering historical maps, a chronology of past events, short biographies of significant individuals, and episodes in the Mall's history. The site is built on Omeka Classic, designed and written for optimal reading on a smartphone or tablet.

The team behind Histories of the National Mall wrote a comprehensive explanation of the process behind the project, from planning to building to outreach. "Building Histories of the National Mall: A Guide to Creating a Digital Public History Project" serves as an extended case study in building an Omeka project.

How are others using Omeka Classic?

Scholars

Museum professionals

Librarians

  • Use Omeka Classic as the publishing tool to complement your online catalog or launch a digital exhibit.
  • Plugins and features you might like: Dublin Core Extended, Library of Congress Suggest, Resource Meta, CSV Import, OAI-PMH Repository, Omeka API Import; Dublin Core metadata standards, W3C and 508 compliance, extensible and customizable item fields.
  • Examples: DIY History; Virginia Tech Special Collections Online; Isaiah Thomas Broadside Ballads.

Archivists

  • Use Omeka Classic to share your collections, display documents and oral histories, collect user-generated content, and allow users to easily browse and search your digitized archives.
  • Plugins and features you might like: Exhibit Builder, Dublin Core Extended, Docs Viewer, CSV Import, OAI-PMH Repository, Omeka API Import; Dublin Core metadata standards, W3C and 508 compliance, extensible and customizable item fields, tagging.
  • Examples: Florida Memory; Saint John's College Digital Archives.

Enthusiasts

  • Use Omeka Classic to share your personal research or collections with the world, build exhibits, and write essays that showcase your expertise.
  • Plugins and features you might like: Exhibit Builder, Contribution, Social Bookmarking, Exhibit Image Annotation, Simple Vocab; tagging.
  • Examples: A Shoebox of Norwegian Letters; Square Dance History Project.

Educators

  • Use Omeka Classic to create lesson plans with accompanying primary sources, have students engage in the practices of public history and archival science, or serve as an alternative to written essay assignments.
  • Plugins and features you might like: Exhibit Builder, Editorial, Exhibit Image Annotation, Text Annotation, Simple Vocab; different user roles, ability to annotate images.
  • Examples: Fifteenth-Century Italian Art; Goin' North.

Teaching with Omeka Classic

Omeka Classic has been used in classes at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as by high school students. In addition to the information in the Educator use case (above), the following resources may prove helpful for those wanting to use Omeka in their classroom:

Blog posts and articles

  • Amanda Visconti, Teaching with Omeka DH Consultation Notes (originally found at http://literaturegeek.com/2016/08/19/DH-consultation-notes-teaching-omeka), Literature Geek, August 19, 2016.
  • Alston Cobourn, Spreading Awareness of Digital Preservation and Copyright via Omeka-based Projects (originally found at http://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/spreading-awareness-of-digital-preservation-and-copyright-via-omeka-based-projects/), The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, March 28, 2016.
  • Jeffrey McClurken (Associate Professor and Chair of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington). “Teaching with Omeka" (originally found at http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-with-omeka/26078){target=_blank}. ProfHacker blog, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 9, 2010.

Additional Resources

Omeka Gym (originally found at https://omekagym.omeka.net/about): a collection of resources for teaching with Omeka, including tutorials, exercises, assignments, and examples. Created by Alexandra Bolintineanu.

How to read an Omeka site

While not every Omeka Classic site makes use of every feature, there are common threads that make it possible to recognize an Omeka site in the wild.

The easiest of these is the message "Proudly Powered by Omeka" in the footer, which is there by default but may be removed in custom themes. Even if that message is missing, there are clues that a site is built in Omeka Classic which can help you understand the choices the site creators made as the built the site.

Look at the address bar

Omeka sites will almost always have the same paths for certain pages:

  • Browse items is siteurl/items
  • Browse collections is siteurl/collections
  • Exhibits are siteurl/exhibits
  • Advanced search is siteurl/items/search.

Even if the site creators have changed the label for these pages in their navigation menu, the URLs will generally be the same. Checking the address bar to see what function (item, collection, exhibit, etc.) the site is using will help you get a sense of how the creators have structured the site.

Know your themes

Familiarize yourself with the standard themes for Omeka Classic - where the menu is located, how the pages are laid out, and other visual markers of the theme. You will be able to identify frequently-used themes even when colors are changed.

Skim the navigation

  • Pay attention to URLs (/exhibit, /collection, /item, /tag).
  • Identify plugins by the menu navigation label.