Week 12: Building the Pieces – An Exhibit (Understanding Omeka and Simple Pages)

Week 11 Homework (due by Noon on April 2):

In Class (April 2):

  • Housekeeping
  • Lecture: Creating an Exhibit in Omeka and Simple Pages
  • Free Writing: Using your last blog post (#5, Organizing Content) and your data entry of your sources into Omeka, let’s start to think about your Omeka exhibit and how you want your items/metadata to contribute to your project. Write a paragraph on how you can begin to organize your items into an exhibit.

    • Reminder: Omeka’s internal organization maps closely to a physical museum’s organization. Think of an item as a painting on the wall of a museum. Note that the item has accompanying metadata (information about its provenance and descriptive details). The museum may organize items into permanent collections based on shared characteristics or donors. Items from multiple collections may be combined and contextualized in an exhibit. Often, text accompanies the items and tells a story. Just as exhibits are temporary in museums, exhibits are unique to Omeka.

      • You can export items and collections from Omeka, but you cannot export exhibits.

In Class (April 4):

  • 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?
      • IF YOU HAVE NOT PUT YOUR OUTLINE IN YOUR WORDPRESS SITE PLEASE ADD IT TO YOUR #wireframe POST

  • Tool: Figma is a free cloud-based editor that can be used to design everything from wireframes to mockups and more. This tool, however, works best when you use it with a wireframe templates kit.
  • Here is an example of a storyboard from a prior student (please note: this is her final outline, but she worked on it as she was working on the digital project): HIST390-Project-StoryboardDownload
  • Skill Assessment (start in class; due by Noon on April 9):

    • Now that you’ve added five items to Omeka you will use these to create an exhibit. For this assessment, build out the foundation of your exhibit using your #wireframe and #outline.
    • I DO NOT EXPECT YOU TO HAVE MUCH CONTENT ENTERED. THINK OF THIS SKILLS ASSESSMENT AS A PLACEHOLDER FOR YOUR CONTENT – HOW YOU WANT IT TO LOOK.
    • 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 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.
    • Build out the foundation of your exhibit using your #wireframe and #outline. I DO NOT EXPECT YOU TO HAVE MUCH CONTENT ENTERED. THINK OF THIS SKILLS ASSESSMENT AS A PLACEHOLDER FOR YOUR CONTENT – HOW YOU WANT IT TO LOOK. Keep in mind the following elements when you build:

      • should tell a story about topic your topic
      • 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

        • This should be on your Omeka homepage navigation (such as Portfolio or About Me)

      • 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.

    • 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 Noon on April 9)

  • Finish Blog Post #5
  • IF YOU HAVE NOT PUT YOUR OUTLINE IN YOUR WORDPRESS SITE PLEASE ADD IT TO YOUR #wireframe POST (see above for instructions)
  • Finish your Omeka Sills Assessment (see above for instructions)
  • Blog Entry #6: Write a blog post about your experience creating an exhibit and be sure to include a hyperlink to your Omeka exhibit (in draft form)
  • Sign up for a Google account if you don’t already have one.
  • Read: Revolutions in the Classroom: Digital Humanities and the U.S. History Survey 
  • Metadata in Timelines Before we can build a timeline, you need events that you can discuss on your timeline.

    • Find 10 items to add to your timeline

      • Your items can be any date range, or even era
      • Your items will be stronger if you have a visual element, but not every item needs a visual

The following is a list of well-known digital humanities projects that use Omeka Classic:

Dublin Core and Omeka Resources