Omeka is an open-source tool for creating online collections and exhibits. Therefore, Omeka can be useful for projects that involve identifying images, audio, and video related to a central theme and telling a story about them. It can also be used to publish an essay or digital dissertation, share primary source collections, and collaborate with others in the creation of digital scholarship. Additionally, Omeka can be useful for projects with temporal or spatial aspects.
Faculty can have students create digital, media rich exhibits based around themes of the course as a way to engage with these themes in different ways, which can lead to alternate and potentially more thorough understandings of the material. Additionally, creating digital exhibits in Omeka provides a vehicle for teaching students about the storytelling process, organization of information, information and visual literacy concepts, scholarly communications issues, such as the various modes of digital scholarship and copyright, the complex nature of digital media, and writing for a public audience. One such example is South Texas Stories which was created by a public history class at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
Classes can also use Omeka to curate and describe a collection of items, such as artworks owned by the university or images relevant to a topic. In addition to meeting class goals, this type of project teaches about curation, organization of information, visual literacy, and intellectual property, For example, the Blackledge Collection of Roman Coins was created by a student at Washington and Lee University as an independent study.
You can play around with Omeka using their Sandbox and watch an introductory video.
The Omeka S User Manual can provide guidance when working on projects.
The recordings below are from a two-part Omeka Training Series held in the Office for Faculty Excellence in Fall 2021.