Dear Travelers,
What are historians? Yes, we are scholars and academics, but one of the biggest and most important jobs we hold is that of storytellers. One of my favorite quotes is written by historian John H. Arnold in his book Inquisition and Power, saying, “The historian…can regenerate the stories of the dead…In the end, however, the historian faces another truth…the dead must retain their silences.” But how can historians share the stories of those whose lives had been lost to history? One way they can do that is by creating websites using Content Management Systems (CMSes).
According to Dominique Santana, “Digital storytelling is most impactful when untethered, continually evolving across various digital platforms, physical installations, or participatory events involving local and global, physical and digital communities.” This type of digital storytelling for history can come through the creation of websites for a specific project, like the Mapping the Medieval Woman project, or the creation of a website for a historian, like this one, who keeps the audience updated on their independent projects. While both of these are options, we are going to focus on websites created for specific projects.
One of the most popular CMSes for creating websites for public history projects in Omeka. Omeka was a CMS developed in 2007 by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media and was built to publish narrative exhibits and collections, specifically for public history projects. Because of this, most historians choose to use it for the creation of their digital history exhibit.
Working with Omeka is quite a learning process and requires a lot of hand-holding (at least for me). Learning everything from how to import different items into the system to how to label different items was difficult for me. When thinking about exhibit labels, labels are supposed to be another example of stories, quickly explaining what the object is and why it’s important.
What do you think about this? Have you used Omeka?
Happy Travels!
Hannah ❤
Hannah Pullen 
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