This week I completed my section of the Omeka inventory. I faced the same issues as Lauren, where a lot of the JPEG files were missing and the item pages were mostly empty. I also saw a good number of instances where the title did not correctly identify the information in the file. For example, the title would suggest the item was about one location when the actual information in the file was about something else. There was even an item with the words “WRONG TITLE?” in the title.

I agree with Lauren that building a controlled vocabulary for the Omeka website would be beneficial for the project. Many of the items share common themes yet are not placed under the same subjects or have no subjects at all. I also wonder how valuable some of the files are. Some items are just pictures from Google maps with no dates, subjects, or ties to specific people in the community. It leads me to wonder how selective the LCHP is when adding files to their archive. Maybe I am just missing the value of these images, though.

I plan to go back through my section and clean up my metadata. I still need to add in the adjustments we decided to make, such as tagging items not in collections with “None” under the Collection tab in our spreadsheet. I look forward to building the contributor guide (once we have access to the backend of the Omeka site) and working on something different for the project.