A digital exhibit is a collection of cultural artifacts, usually accompanied by a scholarly narrative. These collections can consist of sound, images, text, videos, interactive software or a combination thereof. The archetypal exhibit will offer users browsing by categories, searching, pages to explore individual items, and multimedia narratives and annotations to accompany the collection. Digital exhibits have often been used as book companions, but more often than not, they are used as stand alone projects to present a collection of cultural and historical artifacts to the general public.
At Columbia Libraries we can help you build your digital exhibits in many ways. We provide different kinds of support depending on the choices you make. To know which is the right choice for you, please contact one of our Digital Scholarship librarians to set up an initial consultation. Before you do so here are some of your choices, and relevant considerations.
Wax is a set of tools, originally designed at Columbia University Libraries by Marii Nyrop to provide a static site alternative to existing platforms. The goal was to reduce the cost of maintenance, security risks, bandwidth and electricity usage; and, augment the control of creators over their project; and, allow us finally to host and steward faculty and student scholarly exhibits in Library servers. To produce a Wax site with us, we can help you in one of two ways:
Omeka is a very popular Content Management Systems used to create exhibits of cultural artifacts. At the Libraries we can help you set up an Omeka site with our hosting partners Reclaim Hosting, through our "Domain of One's Own" program. To learn more, please contact our Research and Learning Technologies Librarian.
We are happy to work with you on small projects that highlight our collections, especially when those collections have been inappropriately neglected. We are designing workflows that can go from digitization to published exhibit. Please contact our Digital Scholarship Librarian to learn more.
For any other options please contact our Digital Scholarship Librarian to set up a consultation.