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December 19, 2011


Building websites using Drupal and Omeka

A little intro to using Drupal and Omeka from my colleague Ben Gehrels and I…

I hope this will provide a bit of perspective and guidance for those of you still wondering which tool you will use to build your EMIC project.


5 Responses to “Building websites using Drupal and Omeka”

  1. Dean Irvine says:

    Ben and Reilly, thanks so much for putting your works in progress on video for the EMiC community to think about. No doubt the early learning curve for Drupal is steep (just ask Meg Timney about what I did to the first iteration of the EMiC site when she granted me administrator privileges well before I’d earned them), and even the less daunting Omeka poses immense challenges to a novice, too. But I hope that viewers take away from your experience the determination to test out their own sites. By June we will have the first phase of the EMiC digital humanities sprout ready to roll out at DHSI, so you’ll be able to see some more Drupal work in action. In the meantime, let me know if you’d like to get in touch with our Drupal developers at Islandora/DiscoveryGarden. They’ve been a big help to Matt Huculak in getting his Modernist Magazine Database up and running, and perhaps they can be of assistance to you, too.

  2. Anouk says:

    This video is inspiring – how reassuring to hear that a site as elegant as The Story is More than Itself had its share of technical hiccups at the outset! and also that I’m not the only one who found Drupal bewildering (yes, sorry to Meg about the mess I made on the early EMiC site as well …). Plus I’ve learnt something new today: that there’s a web-hosted version of Omeka that doesn’t need to be installed separately. Thank you!

  3. Meagan says:

    What a great video. Thank you so much for posting this, Reilly and Ben!  I think you’ve provided an excellent overview of the two systems–although I’m not sure it will make it any easier for people to choose which one to use, since they both have their strengths and weaknesses!  I think it comes down to preference, in the end.

    Content management systems are robust platforms for DH projects, and that despite the steep learning curve, they offer functionality and sustainability beyond simple xml/xslt (and provide individual scholars with a bootstrap to get their projects up and running on their own).  I’d recommend everyone in DH take a course in learning to use Drupal or Omeka, if only to understand how a CMS works.   

    Dean, I’m really looking forward to seeing what the DH Drupal sprout can do!    

  4. Danny Joris says:

    Nice video. Have you tried drupal gardens? (http://www.drupalgardens.com/) It includes a theme builder in the user interface and easy ways to include modules and themes.

    Good luck!

  5. Anouk says:

    On Humanist today, Tanya Clement has posted about two of her students, Carin Yavorcik and Zane Schwarzlose, who are working with UVA’s Scholars’ Lab to update the Omeka plug-in
    TEIDisplay. This will allow users to upload TEI documents so they will be displayed within the Omeka interface, which I thought might be something EMiC folks might find handy (more at
    http://www.scholarslab.org/announcements/collaborative-mentoring-at-ut-and
    -uva-co-developing-an-updated-teidisplay-for-omeka/). If you’re thinking of using Omeka for your EMiC project and want to have some input into the kind of features that would be useful, they’ve asked for feedback at DH Answers: http://digitalhumanities.org/answers/topic/how-do-you-display-tei-documents-online.

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