As my book selection and earlier post might have implied, I’ve been interested in learning more about digital collections and the technological tools that can preserve, describe and share them. After some searching, I have settled on Omeka and Archon for my sandbox trials. I’m focusing mostly on Omeka, but be on the look out for information about Archon too!

I soon realized that any real test would require a collection of items to describe – so I started local and started scanning some old family photos. While it doesn’t have a lot of external meaning, it’s been a great collection to work with – it has a small but very interest patron group. I just wanted to share some progress I’ve made as well as future goals

Installing Omeka

Installing Omeka and downloading different themes and plugins was a breeze. The directions posted on the Omeka website made it all very easy.

Here is my installation of Omeka – http://www.meyerwebsite.com/omeka/

Scanning Photos

This has been a bit of a headache. Initial attempts at using my family’s printer/scanner/copier provided very slow and lack-luster results. It also had some technical limitations that, while regrettable, I’m not upset about. For reasons related mainly to software, I’ve decided to forgo making true archival quality TIFF scans and have been scanning at the lower quality JPEG form that can be posted directly online without conversion.

Right now – I’ve been scanning photos at 400dpi and saving them as JPEGs. This has been more a matter of hardware – scanner quality and lack of hard drive space for larger TIFF files – but I’ve been pleased with them so far. But, like any good experiment, this might change in the future.

Changing Themes and Plugins.

I know next to nothing about the alphabet soup of internet acronyms – CSS, HTML, PHP, etc. One think I’m hoping to learn about in this process. I’m jumping right in an making minor changes to the CSS here and there (mostly on a trial and error basis) but have been learning a bit more each time. Eventually, I’ll jump in a create my own theme – but I’m quite content tweaking other themes at this point. Will keep this site posted on that front.

I did have a minor triumph that I think I can explain. One of my favorite plugins is the Geolocation plugin they offer. I really love maps, so this was one of my first plugins to install. I still really liked it, but – given the rural nature of my maternal home – I wanted the default view to be Satellite or a hybrid view and not the default street view it provided. I was convinced this could be changed and – lo and behold* – it could! Edit: Here’s how I did it!

Metadata Creation

I’ve got some basic descriptions and dates in at this point, but I want to think carefully and develop a bigger plan about metadata – once I’ve developed it, I will post it here.