I’m back from an exciting weekend at THATCamp, working through with a wide range of digital humanists. Among us there was shared excitement and pleasure to engage in the type of informal dialogue that a BarCamp-style unconference like THATCamp affords. And given the interest in it, we’ll be doing THATCamp again next year so pay attention here and on the THATCamp blog for further information later in the year.

Jeremy and I will be recording a new episode of THATPodcast that looks at how we organized THATCamp, and discuss how others could use a similar approach for an untraditional conference. Until then, I’d encourage you to browse the website for a full list of campers, the schedule that we made on the day of the conference, and the community blog that campers posted their sessions on before Day 1. Here are some photos from THATCamp below the fold, among others on Flickr.

Building THAT Schedule

THATCamp Badges

Text Mining Session

Getting Started ‘Building Stuff’

Crowdsourcing Session

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 inaugural episode of our monthy podcast features an interview with Matt Mullenweg, the inventor of WordPress and a screencast of ScholarPress Courseware, the educational WordPress plugin to manage a class blog and course information. Each episode will follow a similar format, focusing on both an interview and related teaching screencast that leads viewers through the process of using digital tools. The editing in this is a little rough at times, but as our first effort podcasting I’m happy with what we’ve come up with.

Greater Database Flexibility
Thanks to the hard work of Kris Kelly, we’ve removed the Object Relational Mapper Doctrine from our core code, in favor of a custom solution that removes an unnecessary library and makes Omeka significantly faster.

The new version also doesn’t require PDO, but can support mySQLi as a substitute instead. For some users on shared hosts that don’t support PDO, this will come in handy.

Database prefixing allows you to have multiple Omeka installs running on a single database, which is once again important for users on shared hosting.

A New Plugin
We packaged Omeka with a “Dropbox” plugin I’ve been developing – it allows you to batch upload files to get your collection online faster than entering each item separately. I’ve found this to be incredibly useful when putting images online, and I’m sure others will find this helpful as well.

RSS for Syndication of everything
A flexible solution for the aggregation of items is now included in Omeka. XML and RDF outputs can also be given, for not only new items added to a collection, but search results as well. Plugins can hook into the feed class to add their own RSS feeds as well.

Learn More
We’re currently in private beta, but adding new testers with each release. To learn more, visit our website, and email us to sign up to be a beta tester.

With a limited number of ways to represent “true stories”, the narrative structure in children’s biographies is simplified. We can use abstraction as a concept (as abstract as that sounds..) to begin to account for the inaccuracies that Trevor looks at, and the historical computer simulations I’ve explored. He criticizes these books for the absence of contextualizing information about Osama bin Laden, and starting right at 9/11 which establishes a huge bias in the learner. That contextualization is crucial to overcoming abstraction, both in computer simulations, and in children’s literature. In my own research for my thesis, an alarming percentage of students who played the Oregon Trail computer simulation in schools believe that the Native Americans stole your food in the game. There are thieves in the game, however they’re never identified – just mysterious villains. Without establishing a larger framework of Native American/pioneer relations, abstracted knowledge allows users to connote their own ideas based upon preexisting biases. Hello, abstraction.

There is no possible way for either medium to represent history in it’s entirety, so we’re left with a question: what are responsible ways to establish a framework of ideas for young learners? What happens when ideas are simplified, and how do young learners understand those ideas? Are these inaccuracies due to limitations in the mediums? Are they due to biases of the authors? Are either of these even reasonable questions to ask, or merely academic exercises? Who knows? Perhaps we can explore it together. Trevor’s blog has energized my thoughts on a few related topics that I hope to share in the upcoming weeks.

I should mention that Trevor started FirstPast with his fiance, Marjee. FirstPast is unique and definitely worth adding to your feed reader or blogroll (obligatory plug) – joining the ranks of many other terrific CHNM bloggers, including but not limited to… Dan Cohen, Tom Scheinfeldt, Mills Kelly, Sheila Brennan, Ken Albers, and Ammon Shepherd.

CHNM was recently awarded a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to fund Omeka’s development, and we’re currently in private beta. If you’re interested in getting on the invitation list to download and test Omeka, email us and we’ll notify you when there are additional spaces. You’ll also get current information about Omeka’s development at the Omeka blog.

One of the exciting things about Omeka is that it;s extensible for ‘oth themes and plugins. Similar to WordPress, Omeka allows administrators to FTP files into the respective directories, then easily activate extended features. There are tons of possibilities with this. Many projects at CHNM were started using earlier versions of Omeka and deal with collecting oral histories, like the September 11th Archive. Omeka has a contribution plugin so that you can perform similar collecting.

With the passing of Roy Rosenzweig, founder and director of CHNM, we’ve set up a site called Thanks, Roy to gather stories and images about him. The site honors his contribution to us all, and is run by Omeka. Whether you knew Roy or not, I’d encourage you to take some time to visit the site. The contributions so far are nothing short of heartfelt and inspiring. Thanks, Roy.

This past week I began a position at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. I’m currently doing web programming and working on an up-and-coming CHNM project that’s very exciting. I’ll also continue to work on the Crossroads Project at CNDLS as the Digital Curator in charge of a series of online exhibitions we’ll launch in the next year.

This upcoming Wednesday I’ll be joining Rob Pongsajapan and Garrison LeMasters to discuss research in Second Life at the TLISI Virtual Worlds workshop at Georgetown. In preparation – expect one or two SL-related posts in the upcoming days. And yes, Jeremy, I have some future posts on the Oregon Trail in the works as well.