We are currently managing a large collection of objects with a specialised application. We are very happy with it but we'd also like to publish this content on the web with Omeka.
We were wondering whether Omeka is able to work with remote and evolving content and if so which architectures and development approaches are available.
Ideally we'd like to keep most of the content in our existing application so we can keep the collection manageable and consistent. At the same time we'd like to still benefit from all of Omeka's features such as searching, browsing, creating collections, exhibitions and allowing the web users to enrich the content with tags and comments.
One possible solution would be to periodically migrate the items from our existing software to Omeka and only import a minimal set of metadata along with a pointer/identifier to the original item. Hopefully this core data set would be enough to benefit from most of Omeka's functionalities. Whereas the pointers/identifiers would allow custom plug-ins to retrieve (and search on) the rest of the data still held remotely whenever the website requests it.
Is that a realistic approach? Do other people have experience with this kind of integration?
Thanks for your ideas and suggestions.