https://morningroutine.omeka.net/
The purpose of this individual project was for us to create a small digital collection of things we had at hand using Omeka, which is an open-source content management system for online digital collections. Omeka uses a Dublin Core metadata scheme which is a very basic and universal metadata format that doesn’t allow for much creativity or flexibility but is easily applicable to a wide variety of collections due to its no-frills format. I chose the following items for my collection: Pink Toothbrush, Contacts Case, Carlson Fish Oil (capsules), Cinnamon Haze Black Teabag, and The Seventh Scroll (book). These items were to make up the theme of my morning routine as I use each of them in the morning before I start my day. I created their metadata and wrote their descriptions. This project got me to think about how I can creatively bring together seemingly disparate items into a common theme, and how I can apply that creativity to more meaningful archival projects in ways that would extract the items’ natural information and meaning. Some of the issues that arose were determining whether to use “image” or “physical object” for type, since the objects are technically images but the physical objects are what I’m trying to display. I also wasn’t sure whether to use the coverage of the physical book (my room) or the coverage of where the story in the book takes place (Egypt). I figured ‘contributor’ is mostly for creative works but thought it’d be interesting to add the actual store I bought the tea bags from as contributor to the tea’s company. Should ISBN be used for book identifier? Finally, the contacts case only had one word and a letter on it. The word was the company’s name and the letter ‘r’ could be from any Latin-based script/language.
Tools used: Omeka
