Web Exhibit (25% of grade)
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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 Greenwich Village 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.

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!

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.

Your exhibit must contain:

  • Text that you have written that tells both a factual and interpretive story
  • Fifteen to 20 pages, including an introduction, credits, and content pages. You should have written between 3750-5000 words total, roughly 250 per exhibit page.
  • Your theme should center on Greenwich Village History
  • Your images should be primarily drawn from the Greenwich Village 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.
  • Proper citations

Your exhibit may contain:

  • Additional aids, such as timelines, maps,or glossaries
  • Links to additional materials in the Digital Archive

Your exhibit should not contain:

  • Large amounts of material quoted from other sources,especially secondary literature

For examples of Omeka-built exhibits see the GVH exhibits page and the class slides from Week 8.

Dates to Remember

  • Week 12 - (Nov. 24) Create an Omeka exhibit with sections and pages in place. You do not have to have the text written or any items selected for the pages yet. This is about organizing and laying out your ideas. Post a link to your exhibit URL on your wiki page.
  • Week 13 (Dec. 1) - Have three exhibit pages drafted for peer review. Add links to these pages on your student wiki page.
  • Week 14 (Dec. 8) : Provide peer review on the three pages assigned to you.
  • Dec 18- 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 (2pts)

Does your exhibit have at least fifteen 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 (17pts)

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 added or created or provided links to additional sources of information, such as timelines, links, and maps?

Appearance and Function (6pts)

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 HTML or CSS?

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