Creating Natural History Collection with Omeka S

Can a digital NHC be created by a researcher?

Nobutake Kamiya (University of Zurich)

Omeka S is...

• a web publication platform and an open source software (license GPLv3)
• originally developed by Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
• a Digital Scholar project

You can create your own assets and metadata and publish them easily!

Omeka S - Example usage for Judith's project

• Select modules
• Consider the data model

Omeka S - Modules

In this example use case the following modules are installed:

• Scripto
• IIIF Server, Image Server & Universal Viewer
• Folksonomy
• Export

Omeka S - Data structure 1

Use case: A researcher is collecting images (drawing, painting etc.) of different flowers, to find out the aesthetic and cultural meanings of the flowers.

2 data schemes, item set and item:

• Item set should describe a sort of plant/flower (in this case "Chrysanthemum")
• Used vocabularies dcterms and botany

Omeka S - Data structure 2

• The scheme "item" should describe the image of flowers
• Used vocabularies dcterms and CIDOC-CRM

Omeka S - in use

Backend

Frontend

Questions

• Can a digital NHC be created by a researcher? or Can such a dataset be defined as NHC?
• If yes, how can we make the digital NHC sustainable?