Images Lesson Plan I

You will learn to add historical sources (images) to the Omeka content management system as items, and properly document your creation of the item in Omeka.

Background: Images of historical objects provide a rich source base for us to understand the world. As we move into more developed societies, such as ancient Greece and India, we have many more objects, now stored in museums, to inform history.

For this assignment you are going to:

1. Find a historical image on a reputable museum’s website (see below).

2. Link to an image from the website

3. Create an “item” in Omeka (not Omeka Neatline) that will house that image.

4. Enter in the relevant Dublin Core Data into Omeka

5. Describe what your object tells us about the history of poverty.

When we use pictures of objects, there are some common rules that historians have agreed to use about what information is associate with a digital image. If a picture is our “source” then the information that we attach to the “source” is our metadata. You use metadata when you tag someone in a picture- the picture is the “source” and the information you add to help explain the source is the metadata. Tagging in social media is a type of metadata.

Working with Dublin Core – Omeka

When presenting information about the past, scholars needed to agree on what are the key information items, or metadata, that should be attached to historical objects. In 1985 a group created the Dublin Core (named for Dublin, Ohio, not Ireland) . The Dublin Core is 15 key pieces of information we try to attach to all objects. Not all objects have all 15 metadata. Important: Please review the Dublin Core here* before looking for an image. *

Login to our Omeka site and click “Item” and “And an Item”

Link for Face to Face Students: http://jacknorton.org/1101–10-fa18/admin/users/login

Link for Online Only Students: http://jacknorton.org/1101–00-fa18/admin/users/login

Once you have this screen, you can open another tab or window to find an image of a historical object from the Mauryan or Hellenistic periods.

Below is the page that will allow you to add a picture to the collection: Poverty. However, before doing that you need to do two things: learn about the Dublin Core Standards (see above) and how they are used in Omeka and find an image that from the Mauryan or Hellenistic periods in art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

To find an image of Hellenistic or Mauryan art, please review the Met and the British Museum. Both museum have robust search engines on their web pages. Both have two search spaces that return slightly different results. You may use any credible museum’s website (The Louvre and The Smithsonian are also good choices).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is notoriously fussy. And by fussy, I mean it has one of the largest online collections of artifacts in the world that displays only when the British can be bothered.

Sample Image: How to create an save an image for an Omeka item.

Once you’ve found an item from the Mauryan or Hellenistic era, you need to save that image to import it into Omeka. You can do this by right clicking an image and “Save Image As.” Save the image as a jpg, and call it what it is called on the museum website, in this case “Glass mosaic jar.” MOST IMPORTANTLY: You need to copy a stable or permalink for the page so that anyone who sees your image in Omeka can click on the link and see the source. On the Met website, you click on “Permalink” to get that URL. On the British Museum site you may have a choice between two different webpage links (a general description page or a collection.

You’ll need both the image and the information to accurately add an Omeka item.

Adding new item to Omeka collection

Now you are ready to create a new item in Omeka. I like to put the Omeka page right next to the museum page. NOTE: when copying the description, I’ve put it in quotation marks to indicated that the measurements are not my own, but the museums. Creating credible online exhibits demands attention to transparency (what is my work, what is others’ work) and citations (who created what.) We are not creating historical mashups.

Linking your item.

in the source box, write the name of the museum, highlight the museum, click the “Use HTML” box, and click on the link button to create a link.

Add the link from the page of your object.

This link should be the permalink to your object, not the URL of the museum homepage. Tell Omeka to Open Link in a New Window.

Contributor, Rights, Collection and your Historical Argument.

You are the Contributor of this item to our collection. It’s important to included your name as “Contributor,” otherwise I can’t give you a grade.

The rights to all these items are held by the museums. We use the images only for educational purposes. Please note that in the rights section.

I’ve added my item to the “Material Culture” collection. You may feel your item belong best to one of the other three collections.

Important: What does your object tell us, specifically, about poverty in the society in which it was created? Please include your answer to this question (fewer than 100 words, more than 75 words) in the “Description” box.

Fill in the rest of the fields as you have the information- set as “Public” and then hit "Add item.

Grading Criteria

Student:

Added an item to an Omeka collection

Correctly added Dublin Core Metadata to the item.

Correctly linked to an image from a museum website.

Made an explicit and evidenced-based link between the theme of poverty and the object included.

Analyzed what the object selected helps us undertand about the past with regards to poverty (scarcity).