Omeka as a front end to another database

Has anyone set up Omeka as the front end to an external database?

Reason for asking is that we’re currently working with a museum who use Vernon as their archives database and they’re wondering whether they can hook it to Omeka. So basically, any records (or perhaps just selected records) that get added to Vernon would automatically show up in Omeka as item records.

Thanks.

There have been lots of efforts at this kind of thing, connecting to DSpace or Fedora mostly. I’m not familiar with Vernon, though. A plugin could probably do part of it, as you describe it. There would certainly be a custom plugin on the Omeka side.

The trickier thing is the push aspect as you describe it. Things added to Vernon would have to have some kind of trigger to push the data to have it automatically show up in Omeka. Depending on how Vernon works and its API, that might be the harder part.

More generally, a pull from Vernon into Omeka is usually easier. It would not likely be instant, but automatic every day or week or so.

That all depends on how Vernon exposes the data, hopefully with a good API.

Without knowing Vernon, it’s hard to say how feasible it would be or what would be involved.

Thanks, Patrick; this info is much appreciated.

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