Oversights & Opportunities with Omeka

What is data in HASS research?

Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences researchers are often faced with big questions when it comes to planning and orchestrating their data-related projects.

Our recent Omeka workshop took some of these questions and challenges head-on by considering the research ‘life cycle’ that comes before and after using a web-publishing platform.

While Omeka is free, flexible and very easy to use, there are serious and important considerations that must be undertaken before embarking on a research project that has a visual exhibition component. 

Some of these include questions such as:

What kind of story do you want to tell?

Who is your audience?

How will the project or site be used?

What kinds of items will be included in your project?

What kinds of features do you want? Will they enhance the research?

Who will be contributing to the project?

Is the project sustainable?

In the workshop we explored provocations such as these. We trialled this new approach to gain insights into the kinds of questions that HASS researchers ask at the outset of their projects as well as some of the barriers that they face and how these might be overcome. The result was an engaging and thought-provoking discussion around not just Omeka but Digital Humanities research outputs more generally. 

Jared Winton opened the session by canvasing some of the key recommended steps when starting out in a HASS research project that involves collections and data. Jared is the Data Collections Manager at Research Platform Services. ResPlat offer a range of research-specific infrastructure. In the workshop we had a brief look at Mediaflux - just one tool among many for managing digital assets. 

We then looked at Omeka in the context of a data management plan and considered how best to set up a project. Although Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, it’s nevertheless important to seek out expert help in the early stages of a large research project. 

Omeka can handle large archives of metadata and files (over 100,000 items), and is extensible by publicly available plugins and themes. Users can populate an Omeka site by adding items individually or by ‘batch,’ using data migration tools such as the OAI-PMH harvester, and CSV, EAD, and Zotero importer plugins. Omeka accepts and stores all file types, including: images, video, audio, multi-page documents and Pdfs, and Powerpoint presentations.

Our fantastic ResLead Daniel then gave a demonstration of just one way in which a large dataset can be imported into Omeka. Daniel’s example was the Actors Database on IMBD, which he used as a case study dataset.

Using a Python tool (Pandas) to wrangle the data into shape, Daniel showed us the steps that could be taken to transform a pre-existing database for display in Omeka. 

Finally, one of the most important parts of conducting research that uses Digital Humanities methods or tools, is being able to connect with the relevant experts. 

Here at Melbourne University, two of these resources are:

Research Integrity Training (RIOT): covers the principles of research integrity and their application to the planning, conducting and reporting of research. 

Managing Data @ Melbourne: an online program that guides you through the process of writing a data management plan for your research project. It has been developed for graduate researchers, early career researchers, and information professionals.

There’s lots going on in the world of Omeka at the moment.