The Omeka team is very happy to announce the release of Omeka 2.1!
This version moves Omeka much closer to our longstanding goal of interoperability with other systems by including an API (Application Programming Interface) for reading and writing information in your Omeka installation. Some online collections of cultural heritage material are available with APIs, such as through the Digital Public Library of America and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, to name a few. Version 2.1 lets you join the crowd!
Site administrators can create API keys for any user, giving that user the ability to interact with the Omeka installation by way of third-party client applications. For example, a developer could create an application that connects to another system, such as Fedora or Flickr, and by using that API key, add content directly to an Omeka site.
Similarly, data can travel in the opposite direction, allowing content created in Omeka to be queried and manipulated in whatever ways other systems allow.
We created starter clients to help developers get started in Javascript, PHP (using Zend Framework 2), Ruby (contributed by Lincoln Mullen), and Python.
The ExhibitBuilder and SimplePages plugins have also been updated to work with the API. Additional plugins will soon be updated to also expose their data. Note that plugins that are updated to use the API require Omeka version 2.1 or higher, and will not work properly with sites running Omeka 2.0.
For more detailed information about the release, read the release notes, and learn more about managing the API in our codex.
The release also includes updates to all of the core themes: Thanks, Roy; Berlin; and Seasons. These theme upgrades are compatible with Omeka 2.0.