Dianne Fallon, "Reducing the digital divide: Exploring the Maine's Alien Registration order with community college students" In my presentation, I will discuss how I am using the digital archive for Maine’s 1940 Alien Registration Order to introduce community college students to archival research, to the Omeka exhibition platform and concepts of metadata, and the use of spreadsheets in creating data visualizations, specifically with the tool “Flowmaps Blue.” I will also explore how the archival research from another era helps students to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of immigration issues today, and also discuss pedagogical and ethical considerations in making student work public, especially when the work may need further documentation and editing. My presentation will include my Omeka site in progress as well as a basic explanation of how to use the “Flowmaps Blue” mapping tool. Link: https://yorkcountyhistory.org/maine-alien-registration-order-of-1940/
Deb Smith and Lisa Timothy, "Using Omeka in Public Libraries to create local history collections" Public librarians are frequently gatekeepers of valuable local history collections, but few receive or have any access to training in the creation of digital collections. The online course Creating Local Linkages, offered by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, specifically trains public librarians to create digital local history collections using Omeka. Omeka is a platform familiar to historians and academic librarians but much less well known to public librarians. Hear from two public librarians who have completed this course, exploring the benefits and challenges of using Omeka to create digital local history collections.
The panel will address the practical challenges of creating digital history collections in public libraries, specifically covering issues such as staffing, time, training, funding and copyright. Opportunities and the benefits of wider collaboration between academia and public libraries will also be explored.
Patrick Murray-John, "A WordPress-Institutional Repository Connector, updated for WordPress 5 : The Gutenbergification" Northeastern University uses a custom WordPress plugin for public facing web exhibitions using content from our institutional repository and other sources. Currently there are nearly forty sites produced by faculty research projects, teaching sites, and our archives and special collections. The original plugin was based on WordPress's shortcode system.
With WordPress 5, that shortcode system fell out of favor, with the preference moving toward the React-based Gutenberg editing interface.
This demonstration and discussion will compare and contrast the old and new systems of our WordPress plugin, with brief but detailed notes about the technical, user experience, and philosophical changes involved in the transition.
We will start with the close relationship between publication via WordPress and content management primarily with our institutional repository. Then, we will look at the affordances (and deficiencies) of WordPress as a publication platform with that technical dependency. Finally, the evolution of the plugin prompted by WordPress's development will address the constraints and possibilities in WordPress 5.
