There are a lot of different kinds of platforms in the world, but today the subject was web hosting platforms for art history research projects. As a group, we played with Drupal, Scalar and Omeka, but we also looked at a great variety of sites, thinking about their designs, their architecture, how well their design served their goals, how difficult or complex the sites were to construct and maintain.
I appreciated the chance to play with Omeka, especially to see what kind of a learning curve there would be to become truly effective in using the platform to accomplish what I would like to. As someone based in a museum, I know that my research will be hosted (eventually!) on the museum site and I won’t be personally responsible for constructing a website. I am looking forward to learning more and happy that I won’t have to rely completely on my limited skills to get my work out there.
For me the big takeaway today was the extended conversation in the morning about challenges faced by scholars at small schools with limited support for digital projects (or even research in some cases). It took a while but by the end of the morning, the group and our fabulous instructors, Sheila A. Brennan and Sharon M. Leon of the RRCHNM, and guest instructor Kimon Keramidas, Director of the Digital Media Lab, Bard Graduate Center, had come up with a range of strategies to address those challenges. Now we just have to lay the groundwork for those ideas to become reality.