In this training, I used Omeka to create a timeline for my Virtual Titular Head project.
In previous trainings, I primarily used Omeka as a tool to store items in collections – like I did while making a collection of visuals and metadata on 19th-century Danish art. In contrast, I work with a lot of time variables for creating a visual timeline of Titular Head’s history as a Grinnell College tradition.
Therefore, I wanted to try to combine the two. I anticipated the ‘items in collections’ would translate well to creating a timeline. Additionally, I hoped that adding individual events onto Omeka instead of using Google Sheets to keep track of events may provide an alternative solution to the security and storage concerns of the traditional Google Sheets method.
Installing the Timeline Plugin
I used Omeka’s Timeline Plugin by uploading and extracting the downloaded zip file (from the linked site) onto the ‘my files’ section, accessible on the CPanel dashboard. This allowed the system to install Timeline Plugin for my Omeka website.
Then, following the tutorial, I created items (individual events) inside a new collection (a collection of events to include in my timeline) on my Omeka dashboard page.
Outcome
An outcome of the training, here is the final timeline created in this training:
https://omeka.mahironoda.sites.grinnell.edu/cms/timeline/show/1
While capturing all the events in the original timeline created using TimelineJS, it introduces a better way to organize individual events by using Omeka’s collection tools, and adds better security without needing a Google account and publishing the original database.
While I did not expect to be able to create a TimelineJS timeline using Omeka, this training opened my eyes to different ways of combining distinct tools and using a tool in the context of another – which can bring a different set of strength, as Omeka did with its distinct ability to organize and categorize events, to bring new strengths and ease of use to achieving similar goals.