We have come to the end of the ECDS/HBCU Library Alliance Institute. It definitely has been a good week. I believe the presentations today were a testament to all we have learned this week and the wonderful insight of the ECDS staff. It was great to see my colleagues’ digital projects and how these projects preserve the rich legacy and history of HBCUs and the community they serve.

When I applied to the ECDS/HBCU Library Alliance Institute, I was hoping to achieve three objectives. Those objectives were to expand my knowledge of web technologies used to support digital scholarship, deepen my general knowledge of metadata, data curation, intellectual property (very informative session on Wednesday), and design (another great session on Wednesday), and leave with a tangible project that will showcase the rich historical research of my institution. At the end of the Institute, I can definitely say my expectations were met. Thank you ECDS staff and HBCU Library Alliance!

Now onward and forward with creating more online exhibits! #teamomeka

The first two days of the Institute have been rich with very informative presentations and valuable time for hands-on application. The overview of WordPress, Omeka, and mobile app tour, on the first day, were very useful.  The demonstrations of each platform allowed me to not only get a great preview of Omeka (the chosen tool for my project) but allowed me to see the functionality of the other technologies and their potential for future projects at my library. Today  was full of good information about metadata and data management. There were so many good points but some of the immediate take-aways I had from this morning sessions were: there are a number of metadata schemas for specific  areas with a specific purpose (including social media metadata),  utilize techniques to optimize discoverability of digital resources (look into getting a Google Webmaster account),  the future impact of linked data, and data preservation for  future use starts with an ongoing commitment to  following best practices (be more deliberate about selecting file names).

I am enjoying learning concepts in the morning and then applying those concepts in the afternoon with hands-on application. For example, when working with files to upload into Omeka, I was more mindful of file naming convention and had a better understanding of Dublin Core element definitions.