Omeka S alpha release, request for feedback
Patrick Murray-John
Greetings Omeka Developers,
As many of you know, we at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media have been busy working on the next generation of Omeka, Omeka S.
Omeka S will be different from the Omeka 2.x series in several respects, both in conception and in technology stack.
The two primary conceptual differences are that 1) it aims to be ‘multisite’, fitting the needs of institutions that need to deploy many Omeka sites from one installation, and 2) it aims to have better interoperability with other systems, such as Fedora, DSpace, and Linked Open Data.
We are now inviting some of our institutional partners to take a look at the basic functionality of Omeka S and to provide feedback. For our developer community, we also wanted to let you see some of the differences between Omeka Classic and Omeka S so you can begin assessing what a switch would entail, if you decide it is appropriate.
We are releasing an alpha of Omeka S through a staged roll-out -- first to trusted friends and our core developer community. We have created a zip of the software for easy installation, but you can explore the core code on GitHub. Some basic developer documentation is available there, as well. Because of your knowledge of a wide range of uses -- and desired functionality -- for the current Omeka 2.x, we'd like to invite you to explore some of the features we have built into the software for this alpha release.
Omeka S is a distinct product from the Omeka 2.x series -- there is currently no upgrade path. Also, as an alpha, it is not ready for production deployment.
While we have features yet to add, your impressions of some of the core functionality will be immensely helpful in making sure we are on a good path toward making Omeka S fit your needs.
Some of the most important changes that differentiate Omeka S from Omeka 2.x are:
Metadata options: Omeka S greatly expands the options for metadata, especially for Linked Open Data, now including both the Friend Of A Friend vocabulary and Bibliography Ontology. Relatedly, values for metadata properties can now refer to other resources within an Omeka S installation, or to a general URI.
Item Sets: Another difference between Omeka 2.x and Omeka S is that the idea of a ‘Collection’ has been expanded to be a more general ‘Item Set’. Most importantly, an Item can be part of any number of Item Sets. Item Sets can carry all the same kinds of metadata that an Item can. The usual way of associating an Item with an Item Set is through the Item Sets tab for Items. However, because Item metadata can directly refer to other resources in Omeka, an alternate possibility is to use, for example, the Dublin Core “is part of” property.
Classes and Templates: The current notion of Item Types in Omeka Classic is also generalized to conform better with Linked Open Data principles. The classes available in Dublin Core, FOAF, and BIBO can be applied to Items. Similar to Item Types in Omeka 2.x, a Resource Template can also be created to standardize classes and properties for different types of items.
Media: Attaching files to Items is also greatly expanded. In addition to uploading a file, a more general 'Media' tab allows directly attaching content with oEmbed, YouTube URLs, or writing HTML.
Trying tasks like creating an item with attached media, creating item sets and adding items to them, and creating a resource template to use with items will give a first introduction to how Omeka S works and how it differs from Omeka 2.x. Any feedback you can provide us about that functionality will be a great help to us.
We have been creating end user documentation for Omeka S as well. Below is a list of links to documentation for many of the features described above.
We have created a short Google form to help you convey your feedback. It might be helpful to look at that before you begin exploring to get a sense for areas of feedback we are particularly interested in.
Installation and requirements
Since Omeka S is a completely different codebase from Omeka 2.x, using much more contemporary libraries and practices, some of the basic requirements for running the software have changed. Currently, it requires
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Linux
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Apache
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MySql 5.5.3+ and the MySQL driver for PDO
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PHP 5.5+ (the latest stable version preferred) and the PHP extensions for PDO
In the coming weeks, we will periodically send out updates when new features are ready, and when we have responded to your feedback.
Many thanks for your help, and don’t hesitate to be in touch if you have questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Dr. Patrick Murray-John, Omeka Director of Developer Outreach
and The Omeka Team
Sharon M. Leon
I want to take a minute to follow up on Patrick's message from earlier today. I know that you don't hear from me very often in this venue, but as Director of the various Omeka projects, I spend a significant amount of my time monitoring the development of the software, and the wonderful things that you and your communities are building with Omeka. And, I look forward to hearing your feedback on Omeka S.
Though we haven't talked about it much along, the Omeka team has worked extremely hard for the last two and half years to create Omeka S from scratch; the software shares absolutely no code with Omeka 2.x.
During the full stretch of Omeka S development, the team has also steadily continued to improve Omeka 2.x and its associated plugins, patiently answer your queries here, and those of legions of end-users on the Omeka forums, and generally gone about the business of being awesome.
As with most open source software development, the members of the Omeka team don't get nearly enough credit for the work they do. So, I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly recognize them, and thank them for their dedication:
* John Flatness is the Omeka Lead Developer
* Jim Safely is the Omeka Senior Developer and Data Model Architect
* Kim Nguyen is the Omeka UX/UI Developer
* Ken Albers is the Omeka Developer
* Megan Brett is the Omeka End User Outreach Coordinator
* Patrick Murray-John is the Omeka Director of Developer Outreach
* Sheila Brennan is the Omeka Associate Director
Thank you, Omeka Team, and congratulations on the alpha! It's a pleasure to work with you, and you should know that so much good digital cultural heritage work would not be possible with out you.
Take care,
Sharon
Sharon M. Leon, Ph.D.
Director of Public Projects, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
and Associate Professor, Dept of History and Art History
George Mason University | 4400 University Drive, MSN 1E7 Fairfax VA 22030
703-993-3831 | @sleonchnm | sl...@gmu.edu
<http://chnm.gmu.edu/> | <http://6floors.org/bracket/>
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