One of the website building tools that we have the option to use in this class is Omeka. The tool is a little different from WordPress- it’s intended more for use by digital archives and collections, rather than for blogging. However, people who know their way around Omeka can use it to do some pretty cool things. I’ve gotten to mess with the tool a little in previous courses, but I wasn’t aware of the variety of different functions and appearances that Omeka sites can have until I started exploring the list of sites provided by Dr. McClurken.

One Omeka site that I really liked was Histories of the National Mall. The front page was organized into clickable blocks that linked to different parts of the site, which I found visually appealing, and which made it easy to navigate to the pages I was interested in. My favorite part of the site was the interactive map. I found it a little difficult to use with a mouse, but according to the site’s about page it was mainly intended for use on a phone or tablet while walking around the National Mall, so I suppose that isn’t a huge problem. Rather than simply being used to post content that could just as easily be in print, this website used the mapping tool to enhance the way people experience the National Mall, and I admire the creativity that went into making this site. The appearance of the website was a little dated (and the fact that they linked their Tumblr is painfully 2014), but overall I think it’s held up very well, and all of the links I tried still worked.

Another site that I looked at was St. John’s College Digital Archives. This site was closer to what I was expecting from an Omeka site- it was a pretty straightforward archive of visual and audio files, organized into collections both by topic and by the location of the library holding the original physical records. All the items are thoroughly tagged, and the site includes a helpful page offering guidance to using the database, making it easy to navigate the site and find the items you need. One issue that stuck out to me is the lack of transcripts or image descriptions. Most of the items are audio files, scanned documents, or photographs, all of which should probably be transcribed for improved accessibility.