Presentation given by Daniel Montes, Library Assistant in the UCD Library Research Services Unit, at the 2017 CONUL Annual Conference held in Athlone, Ireland on May 31, 2017.

1. ONLINE EXHIBIT TOOLS:
vs
and other open source alternatives
Daniel Montes (University College Dublin)
CONUL Conference, 30-31 May 2017, Athlone

2. Summary
•Introduction to online exhibits
•Online exhibits workflow
•Tool comparison: GCI vs Omeka
•Other open source tools
•Conclusions

3. Introduction to online exhibits
- What is an online exhibit?
A curated digital showcase of images, texts, video and audio organized into a
coherent narrative with the aim of engaging an audience that is not
necessarily expert.
- Burcaw in “Introduction to museum work” (1975) distinguished between:
- display = showing
- exhibit = showing + telling
- Format increasingly used for different memory institutions that are not
museums.

4. Introduction to online exhibits (cont.)
- In the era of information overload, “deceleration, simplicity, and
narration have all been suggested as antidotes” (Kraemer, 2007)
- Need of an effort to reinstate context without distracting:
- Digital cultural heritage objects must not be isolated.
- The exhibit must give access to primary source documents contained within
collections but that integration must be flexible, not try to turn casual users
into researchers.
- Remove superfluous information = “less clicking, more watching” (Birchall &
Faherty, 2016)

5. Introduction to online exhibits (cont.)
- Types of online exhibits
- Digital version of a physical exhibit
- Physical exhibit complement
- Independent existence
- Technologies and online exhibits go hand in hand.
- Some institutions like Wellcome Collection with its Digital Stories are
innovating in this field, but are big institutions a model for others?
- Good exhibits require time and dedication. Each institution has the
challenge of creating a flexible and sustainable model for creating
exhibitions, through workflow standardization (including the
selection of appropriate technological tools).

6. Online exhibits workflow
- The selection of a particular technological tool must be framed within a workflow:
- Initial planning
- CCU (Context, Content, Users) analysis
- Peculiarities of our organization and benchmarking
- Possible content: it is copyrighted?
- Identify potential users and engage stakeholders
- Schematic design
- Outline functional requirements (general, content, spatial and temporal encoding, user interaction)
- Selection of the technological tool
- Other phases
- Final design: storyboard
- Technical implementation
- Marketing
- Evaluation
- Maintenance
- All the workflow must be reflected in a planning document or “exhibition brief”.

7. Tool comparison
Launch in 2011 by Google. Launch in 2008 by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for
History and New Media at George Mason University.
It is a service/platform (through Google Arts &
Culture).
It is a service/platform (omeka.net) but mainly a
product/software to manage digital collections and
exhibits (omeka.org).
It is used by more that 1000 partner institutions. 7 in
Ireland, all in Dublin and 4 are CONUL members.
Difficult to know the exact number of adopters. Used
by Europeana or DPLA, and some libraries in Ireland.
Also used by individual researchers to showcase their
research.
Not open source, free to use for non-profit but by
invitation only.
Open source, free to use.
Don’t use an standardized metadata format. Use Dublin Core

10. Tool comparison - Functional requirements: general
Requirement Google Arts & Culture Omeka
Optimised for mobile devices Yes Only tablets
Responsive web Yes Yes
Guided zoom option Yes No
Look and field customization No Yes
Metric indicators Yes Yes
Link to physical exhibits No Yes (with QR codes)
Launch Need to wait a month for approval Flexible
Visually appealing Yes Less appealing but possibility of
customisation by modifying code
IIIF integration No Yes
API No Yes

11. Tool comparison - Functional requirement: content
Requirement Google Arts & Culture Omeka
Image resolution It must be high resolution (300 PPI
minimum) with no margins
High resolution is not compulsory
Content licence Only copyright free or cleared
content. Open licence
Preferably open but flexible
Downloadable files No Yes
File formats Images: JPEG, GIF, PNG, single-image
TIFF
Audio: MP3 or WAV
Video: YouTube
No multi-page files like PDF
No restrictions
Minimum number of files 50 Not minimum
Amount of narrative text Very limited No limited
Translation of metadata
and text
Yes Not out of the box

12. Tool comparison - Functional requirement: spatial and
temporal encoding
Requirement Google Arts & Culture Omeka
Layout Basic linear slideshow format.
No branching or hierarchies.
Two basic page layouts: the standard
and the immersive:
Possibility of complex layouts:
Maps Seamless integration with Google Maps Choice of basemaps, including historic maps.
Neatline plugin allows to tell stories with maps
and timelines.
Timeline No Yes
Temporal
animation
No Yes

13. Tool comparison - Functional requirement: user interaction
Requirement Google Arts & Culture Omeka
Sharing option Yes Yes
Comments No Yes
Annotations No Yes
Control the reproduction of
multimedia
Yes, but only in the standard
layout.
Yes
Social media buttons Yes Yes
Integration with eLearning
platforms
Yes (Google Classroom) Not out of the box
Wikipedia integration No Yes

14. Other open source tools
• Juxtapose JS to compare two images for highlighting then/now
stories.
• StoryMap JS to tell stories that highlight the locations of a series
of events.
• Odyssey mix written narrative, multimedia and interaction into a
map driven story. Created by CartoDB and funded by the OKF.
• TimeMapper mix timelines and maps.
• Scalar to assemble media and text in a variety of ways.
• Mukurtu is grassroots project.
• Movio is created by the EU funded AthenaPlus project, also
responsible of the DEMES Element Set.

15. Conclusions
• Google exhibits are a good option to attract casual users, but not good
enough to engage other users (e.g. researchers may want to create an
exhibit to showcase their research to other colleagues).
• Open source software can bring many benefits to libraries: e.g.
creating and sharing plugins to extend functionality of Omeka.
• The content licence policy of Google Cultural Institute can be seen as a
disadvantage but also as an opportunity: any item in the platform can
be reused to enrich your own exhibits.
• Lack of a comprehensive catalogue or repository of digital exhibits.

16. Conclusions and recommendations
• Online exhibits must be properly described: The Digital Exhibition
Metadata Element Set (DEMES) ?
• Libraries should embrace tools that are metadata driven and that
facilitate interoperability and reusability (APIs, IIIF integration, etc.)
• Institutions must have a sustainable model for creating and
maintaining online exhibits.
• Online exhibits have value on their own, not a sub-product. They
should get persistent identifiers and be properly preserved.

17. Thank you
daniel.montes@ucd.ie