After some thought, I deemed it appropriate to share here this lengthy post which outlines our experience with Omeka S, including thoughts on a number of choices that needs to be made early on in the development of a digital archive and details about customisations to core modules and themes (some of which previously discussed in this forum).
This post will likely be most relevant to those starting a new digital archive from scratch, and doing so outside of larger organisations or archival institutions with established practices.
It includes details about:
- why choose Omeka S (an extended version of this section is available in Italian)
- how to deal with uncertain location of items with the
mappingmodule (discussed in the forum here) - how to deal with uncertain dating of items
- how to create a two-level hierarchical categorisation of items in Omeka S without using additional modules (this is how the end result looks in practice)
- how to prevent the issue of visitors seeing media pages without being able to see item metadata (by customising the theme and the
mappingmodule, see on forum here) - how to show media metadata only when it’s worth showing them (see on forum, probably pertinent only in less established archives, where media metadata are often limited)
- website statistics
We have also published in full our resource templates, which may be useful to others setting up a digital archive, including the json files that can be used to import them in a fresh install [in Italian].
Again, this is the link to the full post, and here is the link to our Omeka S website [in Italian].
I feel that especially outside of larger organisations it is useful to share experiences and thoughts on how to set up a digital archive with Omeka S.
I hope this is useful to others. Of course, feedback and suggestions are always welcome.
As I look forward to new Omeka S projects, I take it as a chance to thank core developers and all the nice folks providing useful answers in this forum for making Omeka S what it is, and making our digital archive possible.
