Installing Omeka
What is Omeka?
Omeka provides open-source web publishing platforms for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits. Omeka Classic was launched to meet the needs of smaller museums and historical societies who wanted to put their collections online and create narrative exhibits. Since then, Omeka has become the main content management system for thousands of libraries, archives, museums, scholars, and enthusiast users’ websites. Omeka provides a free and open source answer to the need for a web publishing platform that allows content experts to showcase their unique knowledge about their collections.
Omeka Projects (a sample)
The following is a list of well-known digital humanities projects that use Omeka Classic.
- September 11 Digital Archive. Sheila Brennan, Sharon Leon, and the Project Team
- Hurricane Digital Memory Bank. Sheila Brennan and the Project Team
- Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth Century Black Organizing to Digital Life. P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey
- Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery. Judy Giesberg and Jesse Nasta.
- Baltimore 68: Riots and Rebirth. Langsdale Library Special Collections
- Histories of the National Mall. Sharon Leon, Sheila Brennan, and the Project Team
- Bracero History Archive. Sharon Leon, Tom Scheinfeldt, and the Project Team
- Preserve the Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project. Denise Meringolo and Joe Tropea
- Fifteenth-Century Italian Art (Nicole Riesenberger)
- Goin’ North
- Ice Age Flood Explorer (Chad Pritchard, Larry Cebula, and Paul Lindholdt)
- James Monroe Papers (Alexandra deGraffenreid, Seth Mintzer, MacKenzie Murphy, Chris Wright)
- Fredericksburg: City of Hospitals (Jeffrey McClurken)
Installing Omeka Classic
1. Go to Reclaim Hosting.
2. Log in to your client area, if you are not already logged in.
3. Navigate to the cPanel.
4. Omeka is almost always featured under the applications tab. If it is not shown, click all applications, and search for Omeka. Once you locate Omeka, click on the icon.
5. Click install this application.
6. Select a domain location for your Omeka install. It will be a subdomain of your main site. (janedoe.com/omeka). You need to change the directory.
7. You will want to use the recommended version of Omeka, and whichever language you are most comfortable with.
8. Read and accept the license agreement, and consider whether you want updates to occur automatically or if you want to manually update your install. You will want to keep the pre-selected option that creates a backup and automatically restores the backup if the update fails.
9. Create a username and password for your Omeka install. Do not keep the automatically populated username and passwords, because you will not remember them. Choose a name for your Omeka install.
10. Decide whether you want to manage advanced settings yourself, or have Reclaim do it for you.
11. Click install. The automated installer will start and prepare your site.
12. Once Omeka is installed, you will see links to both the homepage and the Omeka dashboard, the back-end of your Omeka install. You will need to log in using the username and password you created in step 9.
13. Once logged in, go to settings in the upper right hand navigation bar. Under the general settings tab, scroll down until you see the field for ImageMagick Directory Path. Enter /usr/bin in that field, and click test. It will let you know whether or not that path works. Click save changes when you are done. Setting this path enables you to generate thumbnails and create derivative images in Omeka.
Adding an Item
1. Navigate to your Omeka dashboard.
2. Click the items tab in the left hand navigation bar.
3. Click the add an item button.
4. In the Dublin Core tab of adding an item, fill out as many metadata fields as possible. It is best to have comprehensive and meaningful metadata.
5. In the item type metadata tab of adding an item, select one of the 16 item types from the dropdown menu. Helper text will appear which will help you determine whether you chose the correct item type. Other additional metadata fields will appear, which you can fill out if you wish.
6. In the files tab of adding an item, select a file or files to attach to the item.
7. In the tags tab of adding an item, you can create tags that describe your item.
8. In any of the tabs for adding an item, you can decide whether or not you want your item to be public (viewable on the public-facing side), or featured (the item will appear on the public-facing homepage of your install). You can also add an item to a collection. Similar to a physical archive, an item can only be in one collection, but can appear in multiple exhibits.
9. When you are done adding metadata, click the add item button.
10. You will be redirected to the items page, and a box will appear to let you know that your item was successfully added.
11. You can view the details, edit, or delete the item from the items page, which you can reach by clicking on the items tab on your left hand navigation bar.
12. You may be tempted to go further, but please stop here. We will work on exhibits next week.