From: Jennifer Scott <jscott@beloithistoricalsociety.com> Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2018 14:19:52 +0000 Message-ID: <CA+1ZwKdmec5=ACzU7gkYH7-uf2hRmWbbbYwZrLx=65Oxjkw8Sw@mail.gmail.com> Subject: Re: Collection Management & Public Access software/application
Thank you so much, Michelle! You just made my day!
I am hoping to use Omeka as a full-site cms. It looks like you're
maintaining a separate wordpress site. Is that right? Did you find Omeka
didn't work well for general content? Are there any plugins for it that you
wish existed? I'm thinking of making some, maybe one to handle events. Last
I looked, I didn't find one.
Your workflow sounds like what I expected. I would love to know the steps
you take. What did you do to map the two systems at the start? I wonder if
I could create a job plugin that could be configured to automatically
import new data? I can't see us moving away from PastPerfect and it would
be nice to automate that process.
I'll definitely be in touch with more questions! Thanks, again!
On Sat, Mar 17, 2018 at 5:40 PM Michelle Gobert <gobert@frontier.com> wrote
:
> Hi all,
>
> We are using both PastPerfect and Omeka. I really like Omeka for its eas
e
> of use and controlled vocabulary plugins for volunteer projects. I did
> figure out how to export from PastPerfect and import them into Omeka.
>
> Jen, next time I export a PastPerfect collection and import it into Omeka
,
> I can jot my steps down for you. My work flow consists of adding items t
o
> PastPerfect and then exporting the collection to Omeka. ( I'm not sure ho
w
> long we will continue to maintain two databases. It's just one of those
> things we do since our original workflow was PastPerfect and it cost us
> quite a bit of $$. ) If you have specific questions about the
> export/import process, feel free to email me directly. My email is liste
d
> below.
>
> Katie, I highly recommend Omeka for your situation. It would allow your
> photo collections to be online and yet your three seasonal employees coul
d
> access the collections and metadata from anywhere they have internet acce
ss.
>
> The problem I ran into (but solved it) was that we wanted our
> "collections" to be harvested by RecollectionWisconsin. But we couldn't
> afford the cost per collection (since in PastPerfect our collections tota
l
> about 50) Once I realized this was a semantics issue and not a metadata
> issue, I simply created 5 harvestable collection headings on Omeka and th
e
> PastPerfect Collection title is included in Omeka as another field.
>
> Our Omeka interface can be found at http://www.crandonpl.org/archives/ if
> you want to take a look.
>
> Let me know if you have any more questions! I'm interested in helping mor
e
> organizations discover the benefits of Omeka!
>
> -Michelle Gobert
> Crandon Area Historical Society
> gobert@frontier.com
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 15, 2018 at 10:01 AM, Kathryn Otto <kathryn.otto@uwrf.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Katie,
>>
>> We are using PastPerfect for our photographs and like it for that. I hav
e
>> found it good for photographs, and we can identify the *collection* (in
>> the Collection Note) as well as the individual image. We plan to use the
ir
>> online version when we have enough of the catalog records in reasonable
>> shape. ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> You are right that PP is not good for archives. Since it was designed b
y
>> museum people, primarily for museum objects, it tries to shoe-horn archi
val
>> *collections* into the single-object style used for museum
>> items--doesn’t work very well. I tried to put some of our digit
ized
>> letters into PP and gave up; it was taking too much time to figure it ou
t,
>> time that I didn’t have.
>>
>>
>>
>> I have not used Omeka, but UW-Parkside uses it for their digital
>> collections: https://archives.uwp.edu/. You might want to talk to their
>> archivist, Melissa Olson (olsonm @ uwp.edu). They are quite happy with
>> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> Kathryn Otto
>>
>> UW-River Falls
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu [mailto:
>> localhistory-request@listserve.uwec.edu] *On Behalf Of *Katie Kirby
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 13, 2018 1:35 PM
>> *To:* localhistory@listserve.uwec.edu
>> *Subject:* Collection Management & Public Access software/application
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi all!
>>
>>
>>
>> Does anyone have any experience using programs like CollectiveAccess or
>> Omeka? I'm looking at options for how to manage our collections and make
>> them (primarily our photo archives) more accessible online and am a litt
le
>> lost.
>>
>>
>>
>> There are so many options: PastPerfect Online, Recollection Wisconsin,
>> CollectiveAccess, Omeka, and others I'm sure. What do you use and why do
>> you like it? What don't you like about it? What does it cost you annuall
y?
>>
>>
>>
>> We currently have PastPerfect and I'm not a big fan of how it handles
>> archives - feels very clumsy. We have about 50 photos on Recollection
>> Wisconsin, which is great for our highlights, but not our entire
>> collections. I like the idea of web based platforms as our three part-ti
me,
>> seasonal employees work off laptops with Google Drive as our sort of sha
red
>> 'server.' Because of this, we only use one computer to catalog, but I wa
nt
>> all of them to be able to remotely. (Sidenote, I've been thinking about
>> trying to put our PP5 files on Google Drive so that all our laptops coul
d
>> access the data files... would that work?)
>>
>>
>>
>> Would appreciate some discussion.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Katie
>>
>
>