I’m pleased to announce that a new version of Omeka was released yesterday. This version of our web publishing system features a very flexible data model that will make data migration easy in the future, improves the exhibit builder, adds a plugin for easily creating pages within your site and firms up of the theme and plugins API. The entire omeka.org website features a terrific redesign, and offers new ways that users can contribute to the project.
“So what does this mean?” Omeka is ready for use today. Whether you’re a scholar, an enthusiast, an archivist or librarian, you’ll find Omeka easy to use and customize to your needs. To use a phrase from early on in the project, Omeka is a great tool to “show your stuff” on the web. Digital photos, scans of documents, texts, video.. anything. It can help organize those objects, and present them elegantly on the web. But don’t just take my word for it — go ahead and look through examples in our showcase page to get some ideas. Dan Cohen had a great post about the Ringwood Library’s use of Omeka, and I see this as only the beginning.
“But we already have a CMS and it’s called WordPress.” I love WordPress, as evidenced by my work developing plugins along with it powering this blog. But unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t use structured metadata the way that scholars, libraries, and archives do. We have controlled vocabularies, 50 ways of classifying the same thing, and need a system that allows us to easily do that. Omeka can help. Featuring an unqualified Dublin Core metadata schema, Omeka 0.10 beta also includes fully extensible element sets to accommodate interoperability and make Omeka a simple solution that can be used by an individual, while also running a powerful engine that can accommodate large digital archives.
As I work on this project, I’m excited by how actively Omeka is reshaping my own scholarly methods. We’re too often bogged down with disciplinary distinctions in the humanities that cloud the commonalities between our research interests. That’s one of the reasons I’ve identified so closely with American Studies and interdisciplinary work. And it’s my hope that in some way, Omeka can also be a bridge among the humanities. As a tool, it thoughtfully incorporates metadata standards and important features that can be integrated into all of our research methods. If you’re interested in joining us and using Omeka, please post on the forums, or contact us. We’d love to hear from you.