Editing Tech stack (section)

===== (originally GreerHeritage.com/cms, now GreerHeritage.com/omeka-s) =====
OMEKA-S

Collections management software is essential for museum operation but is also very expensive. We started with Omeka Classic, a free open-source software package, and later moved to the more robust Omeka-S. Its greatest weakness is in not having a clear systematized mechanism for accession numbering; we are doing that with custom fields, but there is no auto-numbering. For that purpose, we use a Google script applied to a Google Sheet. Omeka-S is installed in GreerHeritage.com.

On the back end, Omeka stores complete records about items in our collection, including accession data, curatorial data, and photo/video content.

On the front end, Omeka automatically publishes some or all of that data to the website, in a user-friendly museum context. It also provides simple searching of our complete database, making it an invaluable research tool.

GEOLOCATION

We utilize multiple Omeka-S plugins, but the Geolocation plugin is worthy of individual comment because it powers the interactive map on our website, which is immensely valuable.

ALTERNATIVES

There are several excellent open-source alternatives to Omeka including ArchivesSpace, CollectiveAccess, and OpenArchive. Each of these, and Omeka, have strengths and weaknesses — usually because each was designed to be great in different areas. CollectiveAcess and ArchivesSpace both look they might be superior solutions to Omeka, but both require more technical expertise than I have.