Creating an Archival Site on a Budget
- Tammy L. White
- Mar 8, 2018
- 2 min read
One of my assignments is to find an affordable, and by affordable, I mean a free host site, so that this history filled school can share their archives with any one who has a desire to research and learn of its rich history. The goal is to make sure that it provides a large enough storage capacity as well as provide the options for a professional design and unique artistic flair to represent the school and its foundation. I will list each site as I review them.
*Omeka
Omeka is a web publishing platform that allows its members to share their digital collections as well as allowing the creation of online exhibits while abiding by Dublin Core Standards. Last semester, a class assignment required my classmates and myself to use Omeka to create our own collections, thus providing us with a little bit of experience with archiving and entering in our own metadata for our own collections.
I will share my own collection, which I simply call "The Tammy White Digital Collection" and you can access with the provided link. It was a very wonderful learning experience.
Overall, Omeka was easy to use after I became familiar with the format and design layout, and my current plan, which is title the Plus Plan, currently cost $35.00 per year and has only 2 GB storage, 2 sites, 20 plugins (allows other options, like allowing the user to contact the owner, hide certain elements from the user, allowing commenting, etc), and provides 8 themes from which to choose.
The other three plans, each with more storage, plugins, and themes, are as follows.
Silver: $75.00
Gold: $350.00 per year
Platinum: $ 1000.00 per year
I am hoping that the school can find a platform that meets their storage needs and allows researchers of local history and alumni to research Saint Stanislaus's many collections as they are digitized. There is such a wealth of history, not only about the school itself, but the students who attended as well.
*BiblioBoard.
BiblioBoard's Webpage displays the following:
Create. Share. Discover.
Use our community engagement tools to create, share and discover content all within your local library. No checkouts, turn always or wait-lists. Just click and read.
Background:
After obtaining a free membership, I have found it to have a plethora of books, research (public library of science), documents, and exhibits from national libraries and archives. Biblio is also proud of their diverse audience of young and old readers, various cultures and communities as well as those who consider themselves "lifetime learners and avid readers" and they have plenty of diverse material to satisfy almost any individual, no matter their culture or background.
Information:
BiblioBoard does not list their prices on line but does offer an email in which to chat to a representative about each libraries individual needs. I have sent them an email requesting information so I am waiting on a reply. Besides not know the cost and how it would work into a school budget, the Website itself is a wonderful online source of many digital books as well as other collections. I could be a useful place for high schools and small colleges to show the world those many digital collections they desire to share in an open access forum.
Website:
https://biblioboard.com/
Contact Email:
libraryrelations@biblioboard.com
