February 12, 2013, 3:00 pm
By Konrad Lawson
Omeka, the web publishing platform for sharing rich digital collections recently got a major update to 2.0. This open source project from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University has been serving many museums, libraries, and other archives large and small with its customizable but relatively simple to use server software. We have introduced Omeka here at ProfHacker, talked about its use in teaching, as well as pointed out some useful ways to customize it and make it more accessible.
I just finished an upgrade from 1.3 on an installation of Omeka I use as a kind of family archive, hosting old Christmas letters, family stories, and anecdotes about objects that have passed from generation to generation. While I miss the built-in browser updating we have been spoiled with in the world of WordPress blogs, the upgrade process for Omeka was still…
Read More
May 14, 2012, 8:00 am
By Cory Bohon
Here at ProfHacker, we’ve published several posts about WordPress and Omeka, two great content management systems designed to make it easy for you to publish and organize your online content. How you let readers know when you publish new content, however, is up to you. One strategy is to use social networks like Twitter to send out short blurbs about new posts. However, managing an online profile and manually sending out these updates can be time consuming. While some Twitter plugins already exist for WordPress to Tweet automatically a link to a new post, I haven’t found one that worked especially well. And as far as I could tell, there was no such plugin for Omeka. Until now.
They say that if you want something done right you should do it yourself. So I created a Twitter plugin for WordPress and Omeka and called it Tweetster.
Tweetster was born out of necessity. Managing multiple …
Read More
December 5, 2011, 11:00 am
By George Williams
Launched in September of 2010, Digital Humanities Questions & Answers is a joint venture of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) and ProfHacker. (See Julie Meloni’s launch announcement.)
Digital Humanities Questions and Answers (@DHAnswers on Twitter) is designed to be a free resource where anyone with an interest in the digital humanities can pose a question to the community of folks working in the field.
Since we last checked in with the site, many interesting threads have been launched and several “best answers” have been provided. Below, I’ve provided links to a few of the threads with best answers:
- Share your (digital) research workflow: “A grad student in the dissertation-writing stage has gathered folders and folders of digital photos, PDF newspaper articles, research notes, maybe video clips and sound files. How does she organize this mess and make …
Read More
August 24, 2011, 3:00 pm
By Amy Cavender
The new academic year is about to begin—or, in many cases, has already begun. Many of our students (and some of their parents) are experiencing a lot of “firsts” as the fall semester begins.
Perhaps it’s an opportune time for faculty to try some “firsts,” too. Not that professors necessarily should be trying something new, but the fall semester seems a good time for it, if other circumstances line up.
As readers might have figured by this point, I’m trying something new myself this fall: a digital project in one of my upper-level courses. We’ve written about digital projects before in this blog: Jeff’s authored posts on teaching with Omeka and having students draw up contracts for their digital projects.
My plan is to replace a traditional research paper assignment with a class project that will involve constructing a website using WordPress. Students will decide together what…
Read More
June 29, 2011, 8:00 am
By Prof. Hacker
[This is a guest post by Caro Pinto, the John Hay Whitney Family Papers Processing Archivist at Yale University Library. Follow her on Twitter at @caropinto.--@jbj]
An Archivist Walks into a Classroom…
Many archivists spend their professional lives working in basements preparing diaries, letters, and photographs for use by students and faculty. Indeed, arrangement and description of such materials represents the bulk of my work as an archivist, but I also spend time in classrooms teaching students how to discover and evaluate all kinds of information. Archivists do not usually find themselves in the classroom, but I am lucky enough to be an archivist who works directly with students and faculty.
And why not? Archivists have at their disposal great props for teaching , making it easy to demonstrate and not just talk about materials from collections of manuscripts, records, and…
Read More
June 14, 2011, 11:00 am
By Cory Bohon
Just a few months ago, I wrote a post introducing a plugin I developed that allows anyone to make their WordPress site more accessible and easier to navigate. [Note: like almost all WordPress plugins, this one works if you're hosting your own site but not if your site is hosted by WordPress.com.] This plugin–which is listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory–makes it easy to specify keyboard shortcuts for built-in WordPress functions and for access to other internal or external pages.
Access keys, as you may already know, are an example of universal design: they make a site easier to navigate not only for people who are blind or have low vision but for all people (provided they can use a keyboard).
But I couldn’t just stop with WordPress. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working to create a plugin with the same functions for Omeka, a content management system for…
Read More
March 29, 2011, 8:00 am
By Cory Bohon
Over the past two years, Dr. Williams and I have been working on research concerning accessible design and digital resources. Accessible design is what makes it possible for people with disabilities to use digital resources as fully as people without disabilities do. Just over a year ago, I started development on a few plugins for Omeka, the content management system for scholarly collections (and a ProfHacker favorite). My goal has been to create plugins that would make it easy for administrators of Omeka-powered collections to increase the accessibility of their sites for end users.
One of these Omeka plugins, called Access Keys, allows site administrators to specify access keys (or keyboard shortcuts) for navigating around Omeka. People who are blind do not navigate Web sites through a graphical user interface; they usually rely exclusively on their keyboard. Access keys are…
Read More
December 2, 2010, 3:00 pm
By Jason B. Jones
When you learn, or develop for, web browser-based technologies, such as HTML, CSS, or Javascript, a couple of things are true: first, you don’t need anything beyond a web browser and a text editor; and second, your learning curve usually happens on your machine. No one else sees your hideous progeny until you’re happy with it, or at least are ready for criticism.
But if you’re learning or designing for or developing any of the newer server-based technologies, such as (to pick two wholly at random) WordPress (ProfHacker on WordPress) or Omeka (ProfHacker on Omeka), things are a little different. First, the software’s server-based, so you need a webserver. (Blogging pro tip: always start with the low-hanging fruit!) And since most people don’t have servers set up on their machines, it feels as though all the learning takes place in public. That can be intimidating. Maybe you…
Read More
October 29, 2010, 11:00 am
By Jeffrey W. McClurken
We here at ProfHacker are big Omeka fans. Julie and I have written about its value for individuals, for institutions, and for teaching. This open-source, free, web-based publishing tool is both a digital repository and a way to build online exhibits. Created to be used easily by non-programmers, it is also flexible and powerful enough to meet large institutional needs.
Up until this point, however, Omeka users have needed to install Omeka themselves, either on their own server or on a web host. While this is a fairly easy process, it is a barrier that some people have been unwilling to take, because of ability, opportunity, or simply comfort level. If you are one of those people, however, you have one less excuse for not using Omeka than you did yesterday. At the Museum Computer Network Conference on Thursday, the Center for History and New Media, the makers of Omeka,…
Read More
August 9, 2010, 11:00 am
By Jeffrey W. McClurken
[Editor's Note: Although this is a post by ProfHacker author Jeffrey McClurken, we would like to acknowledge the assistance of super friends-of-ProfHacker Amanda French and Jeremy Boggs in the creation of this post.]
Now that Julie has told you what Omeka is and what it does, it’s my job to talk about working with students using Omeka. I’ve done so twice as part of a senior undergraduate seminar on Digital History. In both cases I didn’t require students to use Omeka, but introduced it as one of a variety of tools from which students could choose for their digital projects. Here are some lessons I learned from working with students on those projects and in talking with two others who have used Omeka in teaching, Amanda French (in a graduate course at NYU) and Jeremy Boggs (Creative Lead at CHNM and adjunct professor at American University). Most of these lessons take the form of…
Read More
Follow Profhacker through your favorite RSS reader: SUBSCRIBE
Budget restrictions are an ever-present threat to innovation on college campuses. Learn how top technology companies are working with institutions to advance online learning as programs continue to expand on campuses across the country. This special sponsored section features resources available to help develop a successful online education program at your institution.
