Instructions on Omeka's Exhibit Builder.
Instructions on Customizing the Elementaire Theme
Exhibits allow archives and museums to highlight important or interesting objects and stories from their collections. Working with the documents deposited in the New Jersey Digital Archive, both by you and by other students, build an online exhibit using Omeka to explain, interpret and contextualize your topic.
Once you have chosen your topic, you should select the strongest documents from the ones that you have gathered for the exhibit, carefully choosing the ones that help you tell the richest story. Your exhibit should be geared for a general audience, but should not be "dumbed down." Part of the challenge is conveying the complexity of an issue, event, or individual in easy to understand prose. You should be curating and interpreting the topic, not just providing a narrative.
If you would like to work in a team to create a larger exhibit, you may do so with my permission. Just multiply the number of items by the number of team members, and submit a breakdown of how you divided work. You may be graded individually or receive the same grade, depending on how you worked.
Expect that you will do the same amount of research on your exhibit as you do on a standard research paper and start work on it early!
Your exhibit must contain:
- Text that you have written that tells both a factual and interpretive story
- Fifteen to 20 exhibit pages, including an introduction, credits, and content pages. You should have written between 3750-5000 words total, roughly 250 words per exhibit page.
- Your theme should center on New Jersey History
- Your images should be primarily drawn from the New Jersey History Digital Archive.
- You may include a few illustrative images in your exhibit text HTML that are not in the archive, but you still need to acquire permission.
Your exhibit may contain:
- Additional aids, such as timelines, maps,or glossaries
- Links to additional materials in the Digital Archive
- Academic citations (you don't have to use formal citations, but should provide sources for quoted text and specific interpretations, either in a bibliography or works cited page, or as footnotes.)
Your exhibit should not contain:
- Large amounts of material quoted from other sources,especially secondary literature
For examples of Omeka-built exhibits see the Greenwich Village History exhibits page and the Omeka wiki.
Dates to Remember
- Week 5 (Feb. 13) - Post your exhibit topic to your student wiki page with a brief description of your topic.
- Week 12 (Apr. 3) - Mount a draft section and page structure. You do not have to have the text written or your items selected for the pages yet. Post a link to your exhibit URL on your wiki page.
- Week 14 (Apr. 24) - Prepare 3 draft pages for peer review and post links on your student wiki page.
- Week 16 (May 1) - Comment on the three pages assigned to you.
- May 8 - Exhibit is due. Please set all items selected for the exhibit to be publicly viewable, and set the exhibit itself to public.
Grading Criteria
Basics (14%) |
Does your exhibit have at least ten pages/items? Are there typographical errors or have you used poor grammar? Have you cited materials properly? Is your exhibit late? Do your links all work? Is your exhibit public? Are all your items viewable by the public? |
Content (66%) |
Have you selected an interesting topic? Is your interpretation and presentation of the topic original, accurate, well written and accessible to the public? Have you selected good digital objects to tell your story? Are there any glaring faults, anything left out? Have you created or provided links to additional sources of information, to relevant timelines or maps? |
Appearance and Function (20%) |
Have you developed good section and page organization for the exhibit? Is it easy to navigate? Have you selected an appropriate theme for your exhibit? Have you customized your exhibit using Elementaire or HTML/CSS? |