I just installed Omeka on my test server to evaluate the application. So if the answer to my question is real obvious, sorry!
I have another web application that uses photos, PDFs and videos but does not have a museum like cataloging system including accession numbers, copyright, acquisition information, etc. My first dilemma is trying to share the media between the two applications. Where is the information in Omeka kept that tells the application the location of the media? I also like to use the accession number as the file name for all of my media and create a directory structure that reflects a portion of accession number.
At some point I'd like to do a little code integration of the two programs if Omeka proves to support my needs. But that is a subject for later down the road.
Thanks for your help.
There might be a couple ways at this. First, deep down in the guts of Omeka, there's a database table for all the files imported and their derivative images, all of which are stored under the files directory. Omeka just looks up what it needs from that information. Omeka creates its own filenames, though, so off the top of my head I don't think there's a good way to force Omeka to use accession numbers instead.
But for sharing media and data, though, it might be helpful to turn on the API under Settings and look around at the data it gives. It exposes all the data about items and files, so that might also suit your needs.
Thanks Patrick. I did see in the SQL database where the file name was kept both old and new. How does an admin effect the file structure that the files are dropped into or does everything always go to one directory?
I specifically need the structure to NOT place all of the files into one directory. 10,000 to 100,000 files in the same directory gets rather hard to deal with which is why I use accession numbers to name the files (ex: S2014-0129-0001) and the file structure could be S2014-01, S2014-02, etc. This keeps the documents neatly organized for human consumption but is systematic enough to write code to create.
I look at the API as well.
Omeka doesn't really allow for changing the directory structure or file naming conventions.