InfoGuides: Digital Humanities and Social Sciences: Online Exhibits

Last Updated: Feb 27, 2024 12:48 PM

What is an online exhibit?

Online exhibits combine digital objects like photographs with descriptive narrative text.

What can you do with online exhibits?

Showcase unique collections from your institution's Special Collections
Display an archive of images and documents from the Women's Suffrage movement
Work with students to develop a community archive
Show the evolution of an artist's work
Demonstrate the differences between types of Medieval illuminated manuscripts

Omeka

What is Omeka?

Omeka is an online publishing platform. Users can create websites to house digital items (images, audio or video files) and curate them into collections and exhibits. The principle advantage to Omeka over another content management system such as Wordpress is that Omeka has built-in features for adding metadata to your items, collections, and exhibits. It can also integrate a wide variety of plugins, allowing users to create dynamic sites with maps, timelines, or other interactive elements.

Omeka.net vs. Omeka.org

Omeka comes in two versions: Omeka.net (hosted by Omeka) and Omeka.org (hosted by you). Omeka.net hosts your website for you, has subscription levels, and has pre-made themes and plugins. Omeka.org allows you to host your own website powered by Omeka. This gives you greater control over the appearance and functionality, but requires server space and manual maintenance and updating.

Common Tools

Omeka Plugins

Plugins are specific features that can be added to Omeka. Here is a list of all the basic Omeka plugins.

Knightlabs has created a set of javascript libraries that work well with Omeka, here is a short list:

Getting Started: Tutorials

Programming Historian: Up and Running with Omeka.net