Omeka

Omeka (http://www.omeka.org) is a project developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is a web publishing tool that also has a repository, a plug-in architecture, and a robust and active community that builds open source tools to help institutions sort, present, and archive their digital materials.

In a recent blog article by the managing director of the Center for History and New Media, Omeka was touted as being the only real player in this space, the academic web publishing tool for digial media. From the article:

"The easy answer is there is no competition. Omeka’s mix of ease of use, focus on presentation and narrative exhibition, adherence to standards, accommodation for library, museum, and academic users, open source license, open code flexibility, and low ($0) price tag really make it one of a kind. If you are a librarian, archivist, museum professional, or scholar who wants a free, open, relatively simple platform for building a compelling online exhibition, there really isn’t any alternative."

Currently, both the Embryo Project and the MBL are testing Omeka as a platform for managing and publishing their digital materials. A public page to access some of the MBL's digital content related to its history can be viewed at http://mblhistory.ubio.org.