Come to this workshop session at ASECS! We’ll go over the basics of Omeka, an open-source tool developed by the Roy Rosensweig Center for History and New Media that allows you to construct descriptive archives of resources from images, to websites, to videos, and more. What’s better, our students can collaborate on an archive and learn, in the process, how scholarly knowledge is produced and made accessible in an electronic environment–this can give your students insight into the preconditions of research, cataloging conventions, and resource quality control, in addition to offering opportunities to begin a scholarly conversation on their own.
I’ll show you a few interesting sites generated using Omeka, and then we’ll familiarize ourselves with Omeka.net, which you can use with little or no cost to you (in either time or funds) to set up a class archive. Taking on the role of student, you will become a researcher on a central Omeka.net archive and contribute a resource of your choice by uploading files and adding descrptive metadata. We will also discuss some of the potential difficulties and benefits of such a tool in the classroom, and you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions and learn from your colleagues.
Please bring a laptop to this session, and be sure you have Internet access!
