...the Wikipedia is okie dokie (sometimes)!

I am a rabid user of Wikipedia.  Want to find out some random factiod?  CTRL + T, en.wikipedia.org, type it in, and tada!  Knowledge!

But like any resource we use, it must be evaluated and parsed.  I find Wikipedia to be generally reliable.  The only issues I hear of completely erroneous information are usually pages of political figures or celebrities.

...she likes writing contracts more than she likes reading them.

I now know how to use "shall" properly in legalese.  Shall implies obligation.  But it's not "must," which implies requirement.

You shall read on.

...try this new archival tool.

(The History Iguana has a confession.  She doesn't really pay much attention to the Grad Life emails.  It's mostly because she lives down on the beach, so going to the events is usually inconvenient.  However, HI does believe that the best way to learn is to do.)

An upcoming workshop is on the archival tool Zotero.  What is that?  It's an interface that helps you organize your digital files for research, brought to us from our friends at George Mason...  The same friends who have given us Omeka.

Since I won't be going to the workshop, I decided to try playing with it here at home.  I downloaded the standalone version, since the Firefox one didn't work for me.  It's surprisingly easy.

 

All you have to do is add an item, type in all the gooey information, link to a file, and VOILA! You can also organize your items by collection (sound familiar?).  

I decided to give this a go after attempting to organize my thesis research.

...she has never heard of this archive. Why is that?

I moved to Charlotte exactly six years ago today.  For those of you who have just moved here, you'll learn the first question asked of you is, "Where are you from?"  When I would reply, "Louisiana," the next question would be, "Are you here because of the hurricane?"

...that she needs a second post about plug-ins!

Another useful plug-in for Omeka.net is CSV Imports.  Why, you ask...

Truth be told, Omeka can be a bit clunky when it comes to data entry.  By utilizing the CSV imports plug-in, you can input all your information in Excel, then export a CSV file into Omeka.  The only drawback is that since your values are separated by commas (hence Comma Separate Values!), any commas that are in cells such as Item Description will need to be treated specially.  This page will help you out if you choose to use this handy plug-in.

Now if you will excuse me, History Iguana needs to go sun.

...that plug-ins are a way to customize your Omeka.net site!

There are nine plug-in available at Omeka.net.  For a previous site I built for Special Collections, I used three:  Exhibit Builder (obviously!), Simple Pages, and Social Bookmarking.  Within the context of this course, Social Bookmarking is one of the better plug-ins.  I've used it myself to post items from an exhibit.

For the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood exhibit, this will be really great to spread the word about what we've found or have to say about PM's evolution.  Spreading the word has never been easier!

You can (somewhat) control where visitors share your information.  As you can see from the screenshot above, I chose Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo.  (Myspace...  Snort!)  I've never even heard of half of these.  Is there any social media sites on this list that you use?