Omeka¶

Omeka is a relatively easy system to install and use to publish digital collections. It is quite popular for smaller collections and is quite dependent on plug-ins for some functionalities.

Omeka has two branches, the so-called Classic Omeka and Omeka S. Omeka S is like Invenio 3, initially ambitious and attractive, but difficult to understand and somewhat esoteric. So here we'll just describe the Classic Okema.

Summary¶

• Home page: https://omeka.org/
• Development page: https://github.com/omeka/Omeka
• Current version: 2.6.1 (2 May 2018)
• Bibliographic format: Dublin Core, Dublin Core extended and custom fields
• License: GPL v3
• Technical requirements: Apache, PHP and MySQL (MariaDB)

Comment¶

Omeka is a nice system for smaller collections. The default themes are attractive, so they gives a good impression.

Omkea allows some flexibility with metadata: either Dublin Core (strict), or Dublin Core Extended, and in either case, it is possible to create new fields. Records can be attached to collections.

There are three or four predefined user roles.

Omeka is strongly based on plugins; in that sense, there are OAI clients and OAI servers. Some of the plugins are created (and maintaned) by the organitzation that develops Omeka (the Corporation for Digital Scholarship, funded by Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, and others), and others are third party. Only the first ones have some guarantee that they get update in sync with the core system.

The Omeka S branch is like Invenio 3: a complete rewrite, abstract and immature, and difficult to undersand, even thouth we tried it.

Our diagnostic is that it falls short to be an Invenio alternative.