1. Metadata and Omeka
Developing Narratives around Digital Objects
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Deirdre Wildy
Catherine Porter
Shawn Day
Digital Environments Winter Institute
29 January 2014

2. Workshop Strand Agenda
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Wednesday 13:45 - 17:30
What and why is Metadata?
Welcome, Introduction and a look at
Metadata
Hands-On: Breakouts with artefacts
and metadata
Presentation: A Brief Introduction to
OMEKA for collection management
Hands-On: Adding Digital Objects to a
Collection
Roundtable: How do you use
Metadata in Your Work
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Presentation : The Life of Robert Hart
Presentation: Exploring OMEKA and
it’s Narrative Tools
Hands-On: Building a Narrative
Exhibit
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Thursday 9:30 -11:00
Presentation/Case Study:
Crónán Ó Doibhlin
Wrap-Up/ Alternate Tools / Extending
and Discussion – All

3. Objective
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A brief introduction to Metadata, it’s value and how it can
be leveraged using Omeka as a digital narrative tool;
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Outcome: to be informed to evaluate what digital narrative
tools - such as Omeka - may be of use in your research
programme.

4. "If a resource does not have any associated metadata
information, then it is essentially lost."

5. "If a resource has erroneous, inconsistent, or not enough
metadata information, then it is essentially non-existent."

6. Why and How? - Basic Metadata
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What is this resource?
Who created the resource?
When was this resource created or published?
Why was this resource created?
Who owns or how do you purchase the resource?
Can you re-use and/or share this resource? (Licensing)

7. Types of Metadata
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Descriptive metadata —> Identification;
Structural metadata —> Referential;
Administrative metadata —> meta metadata —> Manage;
Technical metadata —> Production Process;
Preservation metadata —> Preservation Processes;
Rights metadata —> Access and Use.
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Some or all

8. A Universe of Standards

9. A Few Common Standards
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Dublin Core (ISO15836)
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Resource discovery across domains
General and Abstracted
GIS Metadata (ISO19115) —> OGC GML
VRA Core - Visual Materials
MODS (METS) —> MARC
MPEG21 - Multimedia Resources

10. Why Metadata?
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Facilitate Discovery of Content;
Help Organise Content;
Facilitate Harvesting of Content;
Support Archiving and Preservation.

11. Who works with Metadata today?

12. A Rather Quick Introduction
to Dublin Core

13. TITLE
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Title
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<dc:title></dc:title>
What the formal name of this resource - how would a user
know it?
Examples: title of a painting, photo, document; the name of a
person when using the "person" item type; the name of a
lesson plan.

14. SUBJECT
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Subject
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<dc:subject></dc:subject>
What is the domain area/topic (non-spatial or temporal) that
the object is part of?
Controlled vocabularies such as the Getty can help here.
Typically keywords, key phrases, or classification codes.
Examples: Library of Congress subject headings; subjectspecific nomenclature.

15. DESCRIPTION
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Description
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<dc:description></dc:description>
What sort of short narrative will help a user to know whether
this resource is relevant to their needs?
This is often an abstract, a table of contents or even a
graphical representation of the object
Examples: a photo caption; descriptive information of an
artifact/museum object; summary of a lesson plan; abstract
or summary of a long document;

16. CREATOR
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Creator
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<dc:creator></dc:creator>
Who is responsible for making this digital resource - digtiser,
digital author?
The original author or the digitising institution?
Examples: Author/authors; artists; photographers; institutional
authors or producers, such as university or federal agency.

17. SOURCE
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Source
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<dc:source></dc:source>
From what resource did the derived digital resource come
from?
This can be a type, a descriptor but best practice recommends
a string conforming to a formal identifier system
Examples: Accession number; Collection of objects; Division of
an archive or library.

18. PUBLISHER
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Publisher
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<dc:publisher></dc:publisher>
Who (what institution is making this resource available?
If there is a license or copyright involved helps to determine
this one
Examples: actual publisher, if there is one; entity or
consortium publishing digital materials.

19. DATE
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Date
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<dc:date></dc:date>
A point or period in the lifecycle of the digital object
When was this scanned? When was it published?
Consistency - decided by project management - documented
Consider in relation to the coverage of the object
Date is one of the trickiest fields to fill.You will want to decide how best
to use it for your project for consistency. There is an open text field for
date so that you can reflect the type of date information you have
whether it is a very specific date MM/DD/YYYY or if it is "circa 1940".

20. CONTRIBUTOR
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Contributor
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<dc:contributor></dc:contributor>
Who (individual, institution, organisation - entity) is making
this object available/responsible for its digitisation?
Examples: person who contributed a story or file for an Omeka
collecting project; owner or donor of collected objects.

21. RIGHTS
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Rights
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<dc:rights></dc:rights>
What restrictions are held in and over this resource?
This is typically a statement relation to the intellectual and
usage rights relating to this digital object
Examples: spell out conditions of use for specific items here;
Creative Commons type; Public Domain.

22. RELATION
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Relation
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<dc:relation></dc:relation>
What resources are related to this digitised object?
Best practice is to refer to a <dc:identifier>
Examples: a still image of a person entered as a "person" type.

23. FORMAT
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Format
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<dc:format></dc:format>
What is the file format of this digital resource?
Examples include size and duration. Recommended best
practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the
Internet Media Types (MIME).

24. LANGUAGE
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Language
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<dc:language></dc:language>
What is the language(s) of the digital resource?
Again best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as
RFC4646
Examples: English; Russian; Spanish, et al.

25. TYPE
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Type
‣ <dc:type></dc:type>
‣ What defined type best represents the object you are referencing?
‣ Best practice to use the DCMI Type controlled vocabulary
‣ http://dublincore.org/documents/2010/10/11/dcmi-typevocabulary/
‣ Examples: For consistency, use item type controlled vocabulary
provided by Omeka: Document, Moving Image, Oral History,
Sound, Still Image,Website, Event, Email, Lesson Plan, Hyperlink,
Person, or Interactive Resource.

26. IDENTIFIER
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Identifier
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<dc:identifier></dc:identifier>
Where will a user find this resource via the web?
A direct and unambiguous identification of the resource unique and persistent - handle?

27. COVERAGE
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Coverage
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<dc:coverage></dc:coverage>
To what defining place or time is this item relevant (spatial or
temporal)?
Typically relies on a controlled vocabulary relevant to the
domain, ie. The Getty Museum / Research Institute
Where appropriate, named places or time periods can be
used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of
coordinates or date ranges.

28. Keeping in Mind the User !!
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How will people find what they are looking for?
How will they differentiate from one 'thing' over another?
How will your information architecture refer to the digital
objects?
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Useful for Straight Dublin Core: Dublin Core Generator

29. Lessons
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The world is fluid and formats and standards change
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How can I choose the right one?
Be consistent and you can transform and evolve Crosswalks
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How can I make the right decisions?
I am a big fan of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)
They have some very useful tools: http://dcc.ac.uk

30. Exercise One
Getting Intimate with Digital Objects

31. Reporting Back

32. A Quick Look at Omeka
Collecting and Managing Digital Objects

33. Who’s Behind Omeka?: CNMH
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Roy Rosenzweig Centre for New Media and History
Founded 1994
George Mason University in Washington
Collaborative Space Supporting 50+ Scholars
To preserve and present history online
Transform scholarship across the humanities
Supported by grants from AHA, NEH, NHC, Library of
Congress, Mellon, Sloan, Rockefeller and Kellog
Foundations amongst others

34. Products
Zotero
Omeka
Omeka.net
THATCamp
Scripto
PressForward
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!
!
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Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is
a free, easy-to-use
Firefox extension to
help you collect,
manage, and cite
your research
sources.
Designed for cultural
Let Omeka.net host your
institutions, enthusiasts,
collections, research,
and educators, Omeka is
exhibits, and digital
a platform for publishing
projects.
online collections and
exhibitions.
Short for “The
Humanities and
Technology Camp,"
THATCamp is a
BarCamp-style, usergenerated
“unconference” on
digital humanities.
Scripto is a free, open
source tool that enables
community
transcriptions of
document and
multimedia files.
PressForward is
pioneering new
methods to capture
and highlight
orphaned or
underappreciated
scholarship and
share it with digital
humanists across
the web.
ScholarPress
Anthologize
Survey Builder
Timeline Builder
Serendip-o-matic
Web Scrapbook
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!
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Manage your class,
Anthologize is a free, open- Build online surveys that
publish research, or
source, plugin that
are especially
collaborate on a
transforms WordPress
applicable to oral
conference
into a platform for
histories.
presentation with this
publishing electronic
hub for scholarly &
texts.
educational plugins.
CHNM Labs: Easily
create and manage a
timeline of historical
events for your
website.
Serendip-o-matic connects
your sources to digital
materials located in
libraries, museums, and
archives around the
world.
Store all kinds of
media items —
URLs, images, text,
and movies — &
collaborate thru the
CHNM online
scrapbook.

35. What is Omeka?
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Omeka was developed at Center for History and New
Media (CHNM) at George Mason University as a "next
generation web publishing platform for museums,
historical societies, scholars, enthusiasts, and
educators." The feature-rich offering provides for the
presentation, searching and browsing of digital
collections along with a robust metadata management
facility.

37. Situating Omeka

38. Omeka in Action
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Example 2

39. OMEKA Core Features
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Based on Open Source
Technology: Linux,
Apache, MySQL, PHP;
Free to Use, Free to
Change;
Easy to Use;
Change Design using
Themes;
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Add Functionality with
Plug-Ins;
Unqualified Dublin Core
Metadata;
Strong Support
Community;
Extensible, Scalable,
Flexible;
Interoperable

40. What is 'an Omeka'
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An Omeka 'instance' contains:
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Items (digital Objects of various
types)
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Collections (of objects)
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Sites (set of collections)
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Exhibits (curated subsets of site
collections)

41. Exercise Two:
Adding Digital Objects to a Collection

42. Workshop Logistics
1. You should have received a username and password to
the Library Omeka instance during the last few days?
2. Please access your User Account on eireidium.com/
omeka/admin - You are all Contributors
3. Add an Item to the Collection

43. Brief Omeka Tutorial: Logging In

44. Brief Omeka Tutorial: The Dashboard
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The Dashboard is where it all happens

45. Brief Omeka Tutorial: Item List
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All of the digital objects

46. Brief Omeka Tutorial: Item List
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Each Item has metadata

47. Brief Omeka Tutorial: Add an Item and its MD
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Return to the Item List
Choose Add Item
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Take your Metadata record and populate the item record
Dublin Core more info: http://dublincore.org
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15 Metadata Elements of a generic and wide-ranging number
of digital resources;
Each Dublin Core element is optional and may be repeated

48. Add an Item
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Enter data to the best of your ability for the Dublin Core
info - bearing in mind not all fields are mandatory;
Title, Description and Subject important.
Title:
Description:
Subject:

49. Supported Item Types
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Document
Still Image
Moving Image
Sound
Oral History
Email
Lesson Plan
Website
HyperLink
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Event (Time-Based
Occurrence)
Person (Biographic)
Interactive Resource

50. Specify Item Type
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You can select from the default ypes supported by Omeka.
These can correspond to the dc:type but not tied directly

51. Add a File to the Item
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You can have one or multiple files;
Depends on type of item.

52. Add Tags to the Item
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Why Tags with all the DC metadata?

53. The Added Item

54. Spend time thinking about your
metadata in advance
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It’s really about best practice
which means although you
can touch and feel an
object, you must define it
properly first

55. Let’s Take a Look at What We Have

56. Roundtable
How does metadata inform and
empower your scholarship?

57. The Life of Robert Hart
Deirdre Wildy

58. Building a Narrative
Leveraging Exhibit to Tell Tales

59. Create an Exhibit
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What is an Exhibit?
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A carefully composed and curated digital showcase that
organizes the images, texts, video, audio, and other
uploaded items on your Omeka site into a coherent
narrative for people to browse.
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- Harriet Green, Librarian, University of Illinois Scholarly Commons

60. Create an Exhibit
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Exhibits consist of Sections and Pages and Group
Collections and Items
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The first step is to take the time to plan your exhibit to
consider basic user interaction.

61. Create an Exhibit
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Time spent at this stage is essential - define the display
architecture

62. Create an Exhibit
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Make sure that the Exhibit Plug-In in installed and
Enabled

63. Create an Exhibit
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Add an Exhibit

64. Create an Exhibit

65. Add a Page

66. Populate Page Sections

67. So,Where are we Now?

68. Add an 'About’ Page
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Use the Simple Page Plug-In to Add A Static Page

69. Thank You
Shawn Day - s.day@qub.co.uk - @iridium
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The Library/Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities
18 University Square - Ground Floor
http://qubdh.co.uk