Link to Omeka exhibits:

Omeka Exhibits: U.S.-Mexico War

My explorations with Omeka consist of two exhibits.

The first exhibit is dedicated to uncovering the palimpsests layering the U.S.-Mexican minstrel-turned-war song, “Lucy Neal.” I liked and disliked this medium for showcasing my research on the evolutionary process of this song. Visually representing these items is an important aspect of this study of “Lucy Neal,” because of the access to archived material and sheet music versions of the song that is available online. Having items organized in this way is much more effective than having a pile of these items in an appendix for reference. This format forces the reader to look at the items in a specific sequence, which would not be guaranteed if the exhibit were in codex form.

This topic is extraordinarily narrow and specific, which does not allow the opportunity of having hundreds of items to showcase in an exhibit. I stretched it a little by adding Acts of Congress pdfs to triangulate history with my application, though I really don’t delve into them or need to for the purpose of this exhibit. Additionally, there wasn’t much narrative to go along with the items in the collection, so I ended up giving more historical context behind the items than explanation of the items. I also could not configure the layout to be as aesthetically pleasing as I would like it to be. I don’t think we had found a solution for how to see the full image of sheet music, which decreases some of the visual quality of the exhibit. Also, the ways that I organized the material, through trial-and-error of left, right, and center alignments still looks unorganized on one of my pages. I’m not sure how to fix this so that the visuals speak more clearly to the effect I was trying to render.

The second exhibit is an experiment for how to use Omeka as a tool for the writing process. I like that Omeka awards users the opportunity to organize and triangulate items and intersect them within a collection. I wanted to try this out as a pre-writing tool because of the emphasis on the user’s own categorization. I think it’s important to be able to visualize data, items, and collections much like it is to organize ideas and information for writing. I thought that Omeka could prove to be a useful tool for more visual learners, or learners who are otherly-abled in terms of how to triangulate data into a cohesive composition. Additionally, the option to re-organize the sequence of pages and blocks within those pages, I thought would be a more tangible way of learning organizational form of an essay, vs. copy and pasting throughout a word document.

It sounds like a great idea, but I don’t think it worked out. Overall, it seemed redundant to include items and information only to reformulate them into an essay format. Additionally, the organization of the blocks, even with multiple layout configurations, look hap-hazard to me.

Since I was toying around with ideas within the U.S.-Mexican War context, as in my first exhibit, the items that I could include are few and far between. My topics present narrow fields that aren’t well-treated. If more items were available, then I think an exhibit would be a much more effective tool for the presentation of such information.

If used in an educational context, I think the best way that I could find application for this is similar to that of a Webquest. An Omeka exhibit reminds me of the format and function of a Webquest, with style. Instead of using this as a tool for the writing process, I think that I would use this as a tool for interactive learning, where information and data is provided and a specific set of assignments are to be completed using the items within the exhibit.