Batch Uploading and Advice on Omeka

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Megan Blair

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Jan 12, 2017, 11:29:10 AM1/12/17
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Hello,

I am working on a documentation project for a part of our town.  Right now the project consists of digital images taken at different points of the year.  We want to add metadata and display the images.  The systems team that I am working on is pushing Omeka as the system we use to do all of that.  From my past experiences using Omeka, I feel like this would not be a good fit.  So I though I would post something here to get some advice from the collective wisdom.  

My first issue I think we are going to experience is batch uploading.  Each run that we do generates about 200 images.  We have already completed three of these runs so we are looking at 600 or more images that will need to have metadata assigned and uploaded.  I looked at the plugin for batch uploading from Dropbox but do not see any other plugins that work for batch uploading a large number of items at once.  Any comments on batch uploading would be greatly appreciated.  

Systems feels that each intersection or road would be an item and then all associated images could just be uploaded to the specific item.  To me it should be that each road/intersection would a collection and then the individual photographs are an item.  What we want in the final display is that someone could click on a google map or map interface and see all the photographs for a specific intersection through time.  My best example would be similar to History Pin.  

The project is intended to grow to include other object types like documents and oral histories, but at the moment its just photographs.  And starting in a few months students will be taking the photographs and uploading them into the system that we pick.  

I just want to make sure that we pick the right solution, so any feedback on using Omeka for projects like this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Megan

Patrick Murray-John

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Jan 12, 2017, 3:38:18 PM1/12/17
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Megan,

On batch uploading, the CSVImport plugin might be closer to what you are looking for. You just need to put the metadata and files into a CSV file, with the files pointing to a URL for the files on the web.

On the collections/items question, that's a little tricky and somewhat subjective to the particular needs of your project, especially its metadata. If you are talking about locations (both intersections and, I presume, different locations along a road?), then each different photograph sounds like a different Item in order to assign the location as precisely as possible. An alternative conception would be to say that each location -- whether particular spot on a road or intersection -- could be the Item. Then, photographs, oral histories, or whatever files would be associated with a specific location.

It kinda depends on how precisely the locations will work. It's an interpretative step that could go either way. Key thing is that for that mapping, locations have to be assigned to Items -- Collections can't have map locations assigned to them. So, the core question is first what needs location data (those'll be Items), then figure out how to organize and display them, and the related files.

Hope that helps. Happy to expand on the thoughts here as will be more helpful.

I'm also curious about more of why it seems like Omeka wouldn't be a good fit, and what other tools you are thinking of that might be better. (Drupal, with a lot of configuration, seems a possible alternative from what you describe so far.)

Patrick
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