Digital Collection Class Projects

• Items: The individual building blocks of a collection. Sortable by type of item and tags. Each student will create a minimum of four items.

• Pages: Pages allow for interpretation and display of a group of items. Each student will create a single page to create their own digital exhibit. The page can be a combination of items, interpretive text, etc.

• Sites: Sites are the public-facing side of Omeka S. They contain interpretative text and rely on items as their building blocks.  They usually highlight aspects of a collection based on some common theme. There will be one site for the entire ENGL 445 class.

The remainder of this guide will walk you through three steps:

1. Logging in to Omeka
2. Updating User Information
3. Adding items to Omeka

Log in to the University of Calgary Class Projects for Omeka site: https://exhibits.library.ucalgary.ca/login

You should have received an e-mail from Omeka S (noreply@exhibits.library.ucalgary.ca) with information about your username and instructions for how to login. If you didn't receive it, or can't find it, please use the "forgot password" link and enter your @ucalgary.ca e-mail address to get a new link.

Once logged in, you can change user information such as your display name and password. To change your display name: 

1. Go to "Users" under ADMIN, and use the Advanced search option, at the top of screen, to search for your email.

2. Search for your current profile 

3. Select the pencil icon to edit. 

4. Under the User information tab you can change the Display name to the name you would like to appear in Omeka. Then Save your changes.

Create a new page to showcase your items, along with interpretive text and any other assets.

The Omeka S help documentation has an excellent guide for creating pages.

Pages in Omeka S are comprised of various blocks of content. For the ENGL 445 Digital Moonstone Projects, each page will:

1. Use 3 “HTML” block to add interpretive text for the introduction, conclusion, and works cited

2. Use 1 “Item Showcase” block to display media items in a visually appealing way

   • The captions available for each item in the "Item Showcase" will contain a paragraph of description for that item

Play around with other blocks to get a page that meets your goals!

Pages, as well as underlying items, will be browseable on the Digital Moonstone Projects site.

NB: Library staff have to add your page to the site's navigation menu, so this won't happen instantly! If it's been a few days and you still don't see your page in the navigation menu, contact Ingrid.

• Go to Items in the left sidebar menu
• Select Add new item (top right)
  
  

• In the next screen, under the Values tab, you should see that you're adding an item to the Resource template titled "ENGL 445: Moonstone." It is important to ensure that you're using the correct template!

• On the Values tab, add metadata to the metadata fields that are shown. For assistance entering metadata, look at the class template (available on the next page!). Note: The title and contributor fields must be filled in to save the item. You can fill in the other fields now or return to the item and edit them later.

• Once you have added the metadata for your item, the next step will involve either uploading or embedding the media (e.g., digital image, audio file, PDF, etc.) for your item.