Webinars of the use of Omeka S at University of Cape Town

Community Contributions Cultural Heritage Projects
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Hello Omeka Community,

Over at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, we are hosting a series of webinars (Ibali Iindaba) where we talk about how we have implemented Omeka S for our digital collections showcase platform. The platform is called Ibali (isiXhosa for story) and can be found at https://ibali.uct.ac.za. If you want to hear about how we have done things (and also offer feedback) you are most invited to join us for any or all of the sessions. All times for the sessions are South African Standard Time (UTC+2.00).

We look forward to seeing you there,
Sanjin

State of the Showcases: Back to Ibali: Digital Collections UCT

  • When: Tuesday, September 30, 2025 @ 14:00
  • The Ibali Indaba is back for 2025! In this opening session, we’ll catch you up on everything that’s been happening on Ibali: Digital Collections UCT since we last met. From Omeka S upgrades and exciting new modules to fresh showcase sites and even fights with AI bots, this is your “state of the showcase” update. Join us as we look back, share what’s new, and preview what’s coming next.
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/ibali-2025-01

FAIR, Open Access and Ownership on Ibali: Digital Collections UCT

  • When: Thursday, October 23, 2025 @ 14:00
  • In celebration of International Open Access Week, this session explores how Ibali collections strive toward FAIR and Open Access principles. We’ll look at the technical and procedural steps that make our collections more findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and discuss how creating these sites fosters community engagement. We’ll also tackle this year’s theme: Who owns the showcase sites on Ibali, and what does ownership mean in a digital space?
  • Register: https://uct.ac.za.libcal.com/calendar/libraryevents/ibali-2025-02

Can Omeka serve as DAMS? Lessons learned from Ibali: Digital Collections UCT

Welcome to the family, a Tour of the New Sites on Ibali Digital Collections UCT

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Hello.
I have a question. In the project rePhotoSA, what plugins of Omeka S do you use?
Thanks and congratulations on the site
Gus

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Thank you @sanjinmuftic for the excellent presentation today and your openness in sharing your experiences with Omeka S. Really interesting and pleasant to listen to.

If you ever need help with setting up Solr in combination with Advanced Search, then feel free to reach out to me.
Although the amount of items in our Digital Collections at Maastricht University is much smaller than yours, you can see that the search is performing very well, even when searching in full texts.

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Dear Gus,

Thanks for your question. In terms of modules for that site we make use of Universal Viewer to present the images - as they are hosted on our IIIF server. We also make use of the Mapping module, though we have a page that we are embedding from an ArcGIS platform. We also have CSS editor for the customisations, Metadata Browse, and Faceted Browse. If you let me know what interests you I can see if i can specify exactly what we used…

Also appreciate the feedback,
Sanjin

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Dear @mcoonen

It was really great to have you there and be able to share work experiences with Omeka S. Thanks so much for your offer of assistance and sharing your site. The search does work really well! I will definitely reach out to you soon to hear more about you got Solr working, that would be so helpful.

Thank you for the feedback around the webinar,

Sanjin

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Hi Sanjin Thanks for the information. My question is about maps, for example, Grid: what software do you use to display the grid? Which module? Thanks Gus

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Sorry for late reply @gusu. So we cheated a bit there and are hosting that map on our ArcGIS server. We did create an item per each QDS on our Omeka S instance. This way each photo is linked to a QDS. Then we used arcGIS to create the QDS grid and gave it a link to each of the QDS items on Omeka S to link to. We then embedded the map on our Omeka S instance. I am not sure if the Cartography module would allow this on the system?