As an archivist, I post content to my website but have fallen behind a bit in knowing the tools my users use and how to prepare my materials for them. As a teacher, F2F and online, I want to know how to integrate digital tools into my coursework and which tools I should teach to my students. As a community historian, I hope to provide info to a rising generation of avocational historians and need to know how they access that info. I need to listen more than talk, and though other sessions cover at least some of my personal concerns, I’d love the opportunity to hear about more tools and strategies from the makers and users assembled here.

Databases are my friends. Every application that I use and care about has a database built into it somewhere: digital audio workstation, video editor, address book, calendar, to-do list (don’t forget online shopping…). Important research is predicated on the analysis of databases. Increasingly, many of my favorite works of art are driven by databases. I’m inspired by civic hacking projects made possible by the open data movement.

So why is it such a pain to create and work with databases? How come we still reach for a spreadsheet when we know darn well a database would be better? Would the world be a better place if everyone databased? Has the NSA made database a dirty word? What tools do we need to make databasing more like sledding?

Come share your love/hate experiences with databases. Teach us about your favorite tools for making life with databases more fulfilling. Let’s imagine together what will replace databases as we know them.

Omeka.net is a web-publishing platform that allows anyone with an account to create or collaborate on a website to display collections and build digital exhibitions (“About,” Omeka.net).

In this workshop for THATCampers with no previous experience with Omeka, we will:

• talk about use cases for Omeka
• look at some Omeka projects
• describe the difference between omeka.net site and running your own instance of Omeka
• talk about plug-ins
• add items to an archive
• assign metadata

If there is interest, following this workshop will be a session dedicated to running your own instance of Omeka through Amazon Web Services (which is free for a year). If you are interested in this, please see my session proposal which has information about what you will need to participate.

If you are interested in creating an Omeka.net site, please sign up for and activate a Basic (free) Omeka.net account before you arrive. You might also bring a laptop with some practice files to upload to your new Omeka.net site!

Why is it important to create digital editions for old manuscripts?  How do you do it?  What is the final product?  How many steps will it take?  What do you need to learn?  HTML?  TEI?  PDFs?  Is support available?

We (Connie Janiga-Perkins and Mary Alexander) would like to share ideas about how to best approach these kinds of projects and discuss the considerations involved.  We are happy to show parts of our project-in-progress, Digital Edition of Jeronima Nava y Saavedra’s Vida (1669-1727), as a jumping-off point (lib.ua.edu/digitalhumanities/jnysvida).  One of our biggest issues has been deciding how much to footnote and how much to “leave” as the author wrote it.

We would love to hear about your digital edition ideas, success, and challenges!