Omeka Digital Exhibits

Omeka is an open source content management site to create and display digital exhibits and collections. MSU hosts Omeka Classic to allow MSU faculty and students to create, edit, and host digital exhibits to display their scholarly and creative research. 

Any MSU affiliates can create a digital exhibit, as long as their work is supported by MSU. For example, they can use the digital exhibits in a course, for their research, or hosting materials sponsored by an MSU club or organization.

Curator's responsibilities include:

• Gathering metadata for exhibition materials.
• Gathering and formatting images of exhibition materials.
• Confirming fair use of each image.
• Preparing additional content such as narrative text and captions.
• Planning the narrative sequence and layout for the exhibition.
• Building the exhibition in Omeka using the above components.
• Addressing any issues that may arise regarding content or copyright.
• Reviewing their own exhibitions at least once every year
• Reviewing their site(s) following a major Omeka upgrade. The Digital Exhibits committee will notify all curators when a major Omeka upgrade occurs. The curator must address any problems found during review.
• If an Omeka online exhibitions curator leaves Mississippi State University, they must designate another person from the sponsoring department to continue reviews going forward. Failure to appoint a designee may result in MSU Library removing the exhibit and any associated items from the site or, in the alternative, assuming the curation of that site.

The main support for Omeka activities will come from the Digital Exhibits Committee. The members of the Digital Exhibits can connect Exhibit Curators to resources within and outside the Libraries to assist them with their exhibit, and provide guidance on best practices.   However, the curator has the primary responsibility for creating the exhibit, managing the items and the collection, creating accurate metadata for those materials, and confirming copyright and fair use of the materials. 

You will need to set up a consultation with a member of Digital Exhibits Committee (library-omeka@library.msstate.edu) who will offer guidance on how to get items digitized.

Site Curators are responsible for identifying copyright and obtaining the copyright owner's declaration and license to include copyrighted material in their Omeka exhibit. Failure to obtain necessary copyright permission might result in a request from outside sources to remove the content or take down the exhibit.

For further information related to copyright matters, consult the Copyright and Fair Use guide, or set up an appointment with the Scholarly Communications team.

It is not possible to automatically migrate a legacy exhibition (previously independently created Omeka exhibits) into MSU's Omeka instance, but you may recreate it. If you choose to recreate your legacy digital exhibit in Omeka, the final product may have a different look and feel from the original. The standard Omeka template places certain limitations on formatting but provides added functionality. Should the digital exhibit curator or sponsoring department decide to recreate exhibitions in Omeka, the working group recommends the following approach:

• The digital exhibit curator or sponsoring department wishing to recreate an online exhibition in Omeka should follow the procedures for a new exhibition.
• As with any new Omeka digital exhibit, the curator recreating a legacy digital exhibit in Omeka will have the assistance of an Expert User.
• Curators recreating legacy digital exhibit should pay special attention to image files and ensure that they meet the minimum required resolution. If digital files used for images in the legacy digital exhibit do not meet this requirement, the curator has two options:
  • Acquire new digital files, whether of the same object or a substitute
  • Remove the image from the exhibition entirely
• Similarly, curators should review all metadata for image files to ensure that the necessary metadata is available, or collect any additional metadata needed to meet the minimum standard.
• If it is not possible for the legacy exhibition to meet all minimum requirements, the curator should consult Omeka Expert User's Group about options for archiving the exhibition.

Contact the Digital Exhibit Committee at library-omeka@library.msstate.edu. We will investigate the plug-in in question to see if we can provide it.

For Omeka support, contact the Digital Exhibits Committee at library-omeka@library.msstate.edu