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Omeka S: A User's Guide

An introductory guide to building online exhibits with Omeka S.

Omeka S Basics

This page provides an overview of how to get started using Omeka S, including a short glossary of key terms and how to create an Omeka S site.

When planning your Omeka site, we recommend building it out in the following order:

  • Creating items
  • Building item sets
  • Building pages
  • Organizing your site

The other tabs in this LibGuide are organized to guide you through each of these steps. 

Omeka S Glossary

Omeka S is designed for archives, historical societies, libraries, and museums creating searchable digital collections of materials. With this in mind, Omeka S' organization and terminology makes the most sense when thinking about physical archives and cultural heritage institutions. A glossary of terms is listed below. 

Please note that, if you are using Omeka.net or Omeka Classic, these two platforms use different terminology compared to Omeka S. We recommend using the Omeka Classic User Manual to learn more about the specific terminology these platforms use. 

Omeka S Terms and Definitions
Term Definition
Item "The records used to build an Omeka S Site" (Omeka S User Manual). An "item" is like a structured database entry that collects useful information in a comparable and shareable format. An item has 3 crucial parts: resources, properties, and values.
Resource The item you are creating the database entry for (e.g., the written work "Measure for Measure").
Property The pre-determined types of data that must be recorded about a resource (e.g. "Title," "Date," "Author). 
Value "The actual data that fills out the Resource-Property-Value triple" (Omeka S User Manual). Used to fill in the properties (e.g. the title "Measure for Measure", the date "1604", or the author "William Shakespeare"). 
Item Set "An aggregation of Items" (Omeka S User Manual). An Item Set is useful to bring together Items that share a property of interest (e.g., a shared author, common historical interest, etc). 
Property "A defined - to one degree or another - kind of metadata used to describe a Resource" (Omeka S User Manual). Examples of Properties include information like a resource's title, its size, its related items or anything else you and your institution determine significant about the resource. 
Resource Template A pre-defined collection of properties or boxes to fill in with information about a given item. A Resource Template is analogous to the header column of a spreadsheet: it defines what properties may or must be recorded about each resource in your collection. 
Vocabulary A published collection of properties that can be added to items. The most commonly used Vocabulary in Omeka S is Dublin Core Terms. Properties can be selected from a Vocabulary to create a Resource Template.

Creating an Omeka S Site

The University of Illinois Library currently provides support for Omeka S through the Illinois Open Publishing Network (IOPN) for more formal projects, involving an author agreement with the library and working on a publication timeline. Those interested in publishing with IOPN can request a publishing consultation to begin the process. 

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign affiliates can also install Omeka S on the campus cPanel service. The video tutorials below provide a walkthrough of how to access cPanel, set up a new site, and install Omeka S.