Margaret Heller (Digital Services Librarian, Loyola University) has written a brief introduction to creating custom themes in Omeka 2.0 on the ACRL TechConnect blog. For libraries that already have Omeka installed, have access to the code, and have multiple groups requesting Omeka sites, creating a theme template can be a useful way to scale what your library can offer while adding a customized touch. As Heller notes, it can also be a valuable learning experience beyond working with the popular tool:

Since this was a new content management system to me, I still have a lot to learn about the best ways to do certain things. This experience was helpful not just in learning Omeka, but also as a small-scale test of planning a new theme for our entire library website, which runs on Drupal.

THATCamp CNHM 2013 took place at George Mason University last weekend and included a Maker Challenge, which resulted in some great tangibles. Some of the notable projects include:

Publishing Contract Repository: “This site aims to enable honest negotiations between authors and publishers by sharing information about contracts. Authors are encouraged to contribute copies of their contracts and to browse the site to see what others have agreed to.”

Digital Historians: Somehow, there was not yet a site for digital historians, so http://www.digitalhistorians.org/ was created. The site was built using Commons in a Box, and is intended to be a hub for activity and collaboration. In the words of site founder Sheila Brennan, “Lots of active historians do digital work, and we should be doing more to connect with one another so that we know about ongoing work and can foster collaboration.” Register for an account if you’re interested in digital history.

DPLA WordPress Plugin: Winner of the THATCamp Prime Maker Challenge, Boone Gorges’ plugin displays related content from the Digital Public Library of America to an author’s WordPress blog content.

Moby Schtick Bot: Mark Sample introduced “Introducing my entry into the THATCamp Maker Challenge: Moby Schtick, a Twitter bot that randomly mashes up tweets from comedian Rob Delaney (“the funniest person on Twitter”) with passages from his favorite novel, Moby-Dick (“the funniest book about sperm whales”).” Sample gives us fair warning: “this bot is not NSFW (NOT SAFE FOR WHALING)”

Lincoln Mullen, PhD candidate at Brandeis University, has created the Catalog Search plugin for Omeka, which builds upon Omeka’s Library of Congress Subject Heading plugin to search Archive Grid, the DPLA, Google Books, Google Scholar, the Hathi Trust, JSTOR, the Library of Congress, and WorldCat based on subject heading. See it in action at the American Converts Database (example) and see the code on GitHub.