Build an Organizational Digital Scholarship Repository using Omeka
Sai Deng · Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research · 2018
As a non-profit organization for librarians of color, Chinese American Librarians Association has members from all over the world. Materials that document the evolution of the organization and its scholarly activities pertain valuable information. There was an urgent need to establish an organizational digital scholarship repository to preserve these materials as well as to serve as a hub that provides valuable research information. After careful comparison and selection, Omeka, a content management system for online digital resources, was chosen. Omeka is open source and thus free with a stable group of developers for a long time. While Omeka is an easy-to-use tool, which accommodates a wide range of customizable themes and a plethora of plugins. For example, Avantgarde was the currently used theme to make the appearance more attractive. One of the plugins in active use is the CSV Import plugin, which enables metadata bulk import. The workflow of using this powerful plugin has the potentiality to be replicated beyond our building instance as it integrates well with common library operations and leverages the system without data preparation cluttering internal settings. Through the poster, we would like to share how Metadata Guidelines has been developed, contents collection strategized, Omeka implemented and configured, and data preparation process used as one channel for outreach. The audience will walk away with our experience.