There’s a small typo in this year’s Code4Lib schedule – Omeka is the digital archive and exhibit-building software developed by the Center for History and New Media, not Omedka as the program states. Hopefully anyone at the conference who Googles “omedka” will find this, and visit our official website, http://omeka.org
We made it to episode two! And check out that Omeka swag! Omeka was featured in the most-recent episode of THAT Podcast, including interviews with CHNM Managing Director, Tom Scheinfeldt and Director of Public Projects, Sharon Leon. The second half of the episode is a screencast taking you through the process of downloading and installing Omeka. The interviews are great reflective moments on Omeka’s current strengths, and where the project is moving in the future.
Jeremy and I plan on featuring Omeka in future episodes – hacking themes and creating plugins, so I’d encourage you to subscribe to the video podcast, or the audio version as well.
On Monday I’ll be traveling out to Portland, Oregon for the week with some fellow CHNM‘ers to present Omeka! Trevor Owens will also be giving a Zotero presentation and pre-conference workshop. It will be a great opportunity to meet some developers face-to-face who I’ve only worked with via email so far. Time permitting, I may blog about while I’m at the conference. For those who will be attending the conference and have stopped by my blog, feel free to introduce yourself in person. A great time to meet-up is at the CHNM-hosted happy hour that’s going on at Bailey’s Taproom – there will be a sign-up sheet at the registration table with more details. I’ll see you in Portland!
This morning we released the first public version of Omeka, the web publishing system for digital collections that I’ve been lucky to be a developer of at the Center for History and New Media since last May. And we’ve come a long way. I’ve seen the code change dramatically, increase significantly in speed, and mature as a tool. This public release follows an internal-beta testing period where a limited number of testers gave Omeka a whirl.
The public release is an important one. We’ve reached a point where we feel comfortable enough with the code that it can run seamlessly for the largest number of users possible. A huge addition, we’ve created what is the start of a plugins directory, allowing Omeka’s core to be augmented in a WordPress-like fashion. Users are encouraged to contribute plugins, as well as themes. And with that openness, we are beginning the development of a community that is centered not only around publishing objects, but also creating open source software that can make history and information accessible to people.
So far Omeka’s 0.9.0 release has been mentioned in several notable places, including the Official Omeka Blog, Inside Higher Ed, Found History, Steve Lawson, and Dan Cohen’s blog. Tom gives a great overview of the project, and how it fits into our former director Roy Rosenzweig’s belief in the practice of public history. Dan Cohen provides some beautiful screen captures of Omeka, and came up with what’s got to be my favorite description of Omeka so far: “For Zotero, it’s ‘like iTunes for your references and research’; for Omeka, think ‘WordPress for your exhibits and collections.’” WordPress for your exhibits and collections it is! And the bundled COinS plugin for Omeka makes your site Zotero compatible, too!
I expect to see you all on the forums! If you have questions or comments about Omeka, please address them there.
The Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) was instrumental in not only deploying the earliest computers into public schools in Minnesota, but also developing software that would become nationally popular like The Oregon Trail computer game. A window into the past, I’ve come across an oral history interview with Dale LaFrenz, the founding assistant director of MECC who recounts the creation and growth of MECC. The interview is available for download in its entirety through the Charles Babbage Institute’s website.
Many people may not realize that The Oregon Trail was originally a game written for teletype machines – what were essentially typewriters connected to a computer mainframe. Those computers originally made-up MECC’s backbone, with one computer shared by each school district using time-sharing. Dale’s interview gives insight into MECC’s decision-making process in 1973, explaining decisions that had a ripple effect across the world of educational computing. Dale recounts:
MECC dispatched two people out to talk to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who were the 21-year-old kids with the new Apple computer. They had already announced their intent to save the world and they were going to help education using the computer. They had no information about what we were doing in Minnesota. They didn’t know anybody was using computers in schools. We told them about MECC and said we’d like to buy five Apple II’s at a special price. They gave us a special price. We brought the five back to Minnesota to sell to Minnesota schools. Minnesota schools not only bought five, but that year we sold over 500 Apple II computers. [...] Moving on to 1980, MECC became the largest seller of Apple computers. And so it happened that Apple got its start in the educational computing business through its Minnesota connection.
What’s also interesting is Dale’s discussion of the decision made to sell MECC, which was a state-owned operation, to a company (MECC would then become the Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation). According to Dale, both IBM and Apple weren’t interested in such an acquisition.
