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University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

T D 387 D- Embodiment, Legacy, and Archiving (Mason)

Weird and Wonderful Little Books

About the Example Collections

Gina Bastone researched, curated, and developed the content for this exhibit. It was originally developed on Omeka.net and its current home is in a Spotlight exhibit on the UT Libraries Exhibits site. The Scalar and CollectionBuilder-GH example exhibits were created by Allyssa Guzman to showcase various open-source options for creating digital collections. Any typos, errors, broken links, or bizarre formatting were introduced by Allyssa when she created the copies of the original exhibit.

The skills needed for each type of software described below are meant only as a basic guide. Everyone learns differently and so we're tried to avoid characterizing skills as easy or hard. All three of these tools have detailed documentation.

Omeka

Skills required:

Using a web interface, filling out a metadata form, uploading files

 

Not required, but helpful:

Working with CSV

 

Cost:

  • Omeka.net- free to $1,000/year
  • Omeka Classic and Omeka S- free, but you must provide your own hosting

File storage: 500mb on free plan on Omeka.net

Themes/customization:

  • 2 themes on free plan on Omeka.net
  • more customization available for Omeka Classic and Omeka S

 

Pros/cons:

+Quick to learn

+Good tools for collaborating with others on a project

-Limited themes and customization options

-Limited widget options

-More advanced options require higher subscription costs

Scalar

Skills required:

Using a web interface, filling out a metadata form, uploading files

 

Not required, but helpful:

Working with CSV, hosting files on the internet

 

Cost: Free 

File storage: up to 2MB per file

Themes/customization: Only one theme, customization requires coding/markdown skills

 

Pros/cons:

+Easy to collaborate with others

+Advanced peer editing tools

+Widget options- timeline, image carousel, map, and more

-Limited theme customization options

-Can only upload files of up to 2mb

Wordpress

Skills required:

Using a text editor

 

Not required, but helpful:

HTML/CSS, configuring advanced settings may require an understanding of web terminology

 

Cost:

  • Wordpress.com- Free to $45/month
  • Wordpress.org- Free, but you must provide your own hosting

File storage: Up to 1GB on the free plan (note the free plan may include ads on your site)

Themes/customization: Many built-in options, plus any additional customization you want to add yourself

 

Pros/cons:

+High potential for customization

-More skills required to customize your site

-Does not have robust metadata features for creating digital collections or archives

CollectionBuilder-GH

Skills required:

Using GitHub, working with CSV, metadata basics

 

Not required, but helpful:

HTML/CSS, Markdown, Jekyll sites (you can use the instructions to configure a basic site without an in-depth knowledge of these skills, but they help with advanced customization)

 

Cost: Free

File storage: Up to 1GB

Themes/customization: About 20 built-in options, plus any additional customization you want to add yourself

 

Pros/cons:

+Site is modular, so easy to move your data in and out of the site

+High potential for customization

+Collections as data option allows others to export data for reuse

-More skills required to get started

Mapping Project: Relaciones Geográficas

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.