All, I have decided to make some adjustments so we spend a little more time workshopping in class. How this is going to work is that I will review some elements of the Omeka Exhibit, as well as finish our Timeline Lecture. During this week, we will take time to work simultaneously on our Skills Assessments for Omeka and the Timeline, which means you all have no homework except to start outlining your project and gathering items to enter into your timeline. Be prepared to workshop and troubleshoot together!
Class Prep
To prep for class on Tuesday, please work on your outline. Here is an example of a completed outline from a prior student (please note: this is her final outline, but she worked on it as she was working on the digital project):
Resources
Dublin Core and Omeka
- Lecture: What is Dublin Core? Metadata, CMS, and Omeka
- Installing Omeka
- Dublin Core – A Beginner’s Guide
- Basic Omeka features and definitions
- Lecture: Creating and Exhibit
- Screenshots: Creating an Omeka Exhibit
- What is a Simple Page?
- Omeka: Uploading Plugins and Themes
Timeline JS
November 9 – Workshop: Project design iterations (post answers on Slack #wireframe)
- Quickly sketch or wireframe three versions of your final project. The purpose of this is to identify alternative strategies for achieving your research goal and to choose the best option.
- Who is the audience and how does each version reach that audience?
- What expertise is necessary and how will it be accessed or acquired? List individuals you would reach out to or resources you would access in order to achieve this.
- Which of the three versions is most feasible, or how would you combine aspects of each into a project completion plan?
- Share out with group
Building the Pieces – Exhibits and Simple Pages, continued (November 9/11)
Skill Assessment (start in class; due by 10am on November 16):
Now that you’ve added five items to Omeka you will use these to create an exhibit. To create exhibits, we will use Omeka’s Exhibit Builder plugin which “allows you to develop online exhibits, or special web pages, that combine items from your Omeka archive and may include narrative text.”[1]
As Omeka’s Exhibit Builder documentation explains: “Exhibits are composed of pages, generally an initial page that introduces your exhibit and subsequent pages composed of the items from your Omeka database that you wish to highlight and/or relate to each other. Exhibit Builder exhibits may be as short as one page or consist of multiple pages. You can make the pages of an exhibit hierarchical.”
The layout of exhibits “is highly customizable, with the pages composed of smaller units called blocks. There are three content block types which come with Exhibit Builder … file with text, gallery, and text block.”
There is no right or wrong way to format your exhibit. You may wish to take a look at some of the examples that were discussed in last week’s class for ideas on how to format your exhibit. It often helps to draw the exhibit on paper before you begin building and the Omeka Exhibit Builder Documentation contains an excellent tutorial on using the plugin.
Your exhibit:
- should tell a story about topic that you chose for last week’s exercise.
- should have at least 2 pages for content and a page for an introduction to your exhibit and they should be broken down as you see fit according to the topic.
- One part of this element should be done using a Simple Page
- should include at a minimum the five items that you’ve added to your collection.
- As you write your exhibit link these items together with prose.
- should be between 750-1000 words.
- As you write your exhibit link these items together with prose.
Remember, this assignment is not only about the technology behind Omeka, but also about the craft of writing for the web.
After Class (due by 10am on November 16):
- Blog Entry #1: Write a blog post about your experience creating an exhibit and be sure to include a hyperlink to your Omeka exhibit (in draft form)
Building the Pieces – Timelines, continued (November 9/11)
In-Class (November 9/11):
- Finish Workshop: What is Timeline.JS?
- Review Sample timelines:
- Key Events in the Persian Gulf Crisis
- Battle of Appomattox
- Women in Computing
- Music Inspired by “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp”
- Timeline of Roman Catholic Popes (site in Spanish but a good example of a timeline with more than 200 entries.)
- British Reformation in Context
Skills Assessment: Timeline (start in class on November 9), Embed timeline no later than 10am on November 16):
- For this skill assignment you will use Timeline.js to make a timeline that chronicles important developments in your topic.
- Should contain 20 events about your topic.
- Events should be drawn from your research.
- An introductory slide/entry that contains a definition of your topic. What were the major themes, events, and issues that dominate your topic? The twenty events you add to your timeline should support this statement. Consider each event a piece of supporting evidence.
- Each event’s entry must include an accurate date, a several sentence description, links to more information where relevant, and an image if possible.
- Each entry’s description needs to address the 5 W’s:
- who or what is this entry about?
- what happened?
- when did it happen?
- where did it happen?
- and lastly, but most importantly, why is this event important or significant in the history of your topic? In other words, why did you choose to include this particular event on your timeline? What makes it special or important?
- Should contain 20 events about your topic.
After Class (due by 10am on November 16):
- Blog Entry, #2: Describe any challenges or issues that arose during the creation of your timeline. What is the added value of incorporating this type of visualization?
- Once you have finished your timeline, embed your timeline into a blog post (if you also want to embed it to your Omeka exhibit, click here for instructions).
Class Prep (for November 16):
- Read:
- Ted Underwood, “Where to Start with Text Mining,” The Stone and the Shell, August 14, 2012.
- Ted Underwood, “Seven Ways Humanists are Using Computers to Understand Text,” The Stone and the Shell, June 4, 2015.
- Dan Cohen, “Searching for the Victorians,” October 4, 2010.
- Explore: Cameron Blevins, “Topic Modeling Martha Ballard’s Diary”
- Watch:
- What we learned from 5 million books (A TED video)
