Thesis = Done!

I am very relieved to have finished my thesis. Though I finished the bulk of the writing a month ago, the process of final polishing, securing approvals, printing it out (a hefty expense), and depositing it at the library is done now as well. My biggest challenge now is to answer that ever present question: What is your thesis about?

This question is all kinds of hard for me. First of all, does the asker really care? If not and I launch into a protracted explanation I may put them to sleep. But if they are, how to explain something that requires a good amount of specialized knowledge to understand well? I often assume people know things about art history that they don’t, or about history in general. I blame the education system (I joke, kinda). Knowing what the Baroque was or the specifics of the Counter Reformation aren’t exactly mainstays of American education. Often the best you can hope for is familiarity with the Renaissance (it was about rebirth or something?) and the Protestant Reformation (95 theses!). This shouldn’t be seen as some kind of snobbery, most certainly most people don’t need to know this, and there are many things that I have just as superficial (or less) knowledge about.

So then what is my thesis about? Well, the one sentence answer is it’s about the decoration of Jesuit churches in the Baroque era. A little more specifically it is about three Jesuit churches in Rome: Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, Il Gesù, and Sant’Ignazio, which were all decorated in the High Baroque style in the second half of the 17th century. Let’s make one thing clear, these churches are awesome! If you ever go to Rome you simply have to go see all of them. What makes them so fantastic is their Baroque styling which is gaudy as hell, but strong and powerful rather than fanciful.

Sant'Andrea, in its baroque glory

The triumphant, powerful, affecting and emotional style of the Baroque was a direct product of the Counter-Reformation (the Catholic reform movement in the wake of the division of Christendom). It sought to bring the faithful back to the fold by appealing to emotion, by provoking reactions by being dramatic and even theatrical. It stands in dramatic contrast to the art of the Renaissance which appealed to the intellect and emphasized eternal forms and platonic ideals.

The interior of the Gesù

As amazing as I find the Baroque style, after its fall from favor it was vilified as decadent and empty. The Jesuit too were denigrated (rightly or wrongly, but I have a soft spot). They were blamed for the spread of the Baroque, and “Jesuit Style” became a pejorative, as well as implying a world-wide conspiracy on the part of the Jesuits to spread the Baroque across the globe supplanting the more pure classicism. We come a long way from this view, but the role of the Jesuits in the invention and propagation of the Baroque is still rife with intrigue, a mystery I probed a bit in my thesis.

In actuality the Jesuits came late to the Baroque party. The style was in full swing by the 1630′s Bernini was already doing up St. Peters in full Baroque grandeur, and several other churches were being decorated in elaborate ceiling paintings (a hallmark of the style). What took the Jesuits so long? Well the order had been dedicated to simplicity and austerity from its beginning a hundred years before. The question we have then is why the shift? They had held off so far, why give in now?

Bernini's Baldacchino in St. Peters in its Baroque glory

The answer I came up with (perhaps not the only answer) was that the Baroque style was uniquely suited to argue for the Jesuit conception of salvation and to undermine the views of their critics. This is the part of my thesis that gets all religious studies, but it is always vital to really understand the theological backdrop of Church art. The problem is theology is incredibly nuanced and often gets boiled down to gross simplifications and the more you investigate the more you find.

Despite this warning the best simplification I can articulate goes a bit like this. There are two forces at work in the process of becoming saved, free will: man’s own agency to do good works and and grace: god’s gift of goodness to people. The respective importance of these two concepts was endlessly debated even or especially within the Catholic Church. If we start with one axiom that there are only be a limited number of saved individuals, we can take these two concepts on different logical paths. If God is all powerful it stands to reason then that if he gives you his grace you are incapable of saying “no thanks, I’ll pass”, God’s grace in this conception is irresistible. From this we must then assume that God doesn’t just offer this grace to anybody, because then everybody would be saved (and this violates our axiom). Thus free-will is practically non-existent, and there is some very strong predestination going on.

On the other hand, if we say that man’s free will is paramount, we must say that God’s grace isn’t so irresistible after all. Then we can say that God does offer this much reduced grace to everybody, and those who are saved are those who say “okay, sign me up.” Free-will is preserved and predestination is de-emphasized (but lets be clear, even Catholics believe in a form of predestination, but in this conception God merely knows what you plan to do with your own free will, logical paradoxes be damned). This was the position of the Jesuits, while the former was that of some of their biggest critics the Jansenists and the Quitests. These groups were in fact Catholic (yes their theology has ties with Protestantism, but only because Luther and Calvin took their theology from Augustine who first wrote on the power of Grace, and who was a doctor of the Catholic Church as well as a saint). While these positions seem stark it was really more of a continuum, which of course didn’t stop each of the groups from painting the other as extremists.

A representation of Heresy among the Damned at the Gesù

What then follows is an analysis of the iconography and style of the three churches put in this context. How do they trumpet Jesuit theology, how do they promote the tenets of free will and universal salvation. These were especially important ideas in the 17th century due to the Jesuit mission to convert pretty much everyone.  The Baroque was a powerful style that overwhelmed the viewer, opened up the heavens before them, and showed them the path to salvation. In these churches, the Jesuit order used this to embed their opinions on these theologies into the church structure itself. I’ll leave the actual visual analysis for the thesis itself.

Free Will Under Fire: Jesuit Church Decoration as Theological Argument

The Blessed overflow the frame at the Gesù

A New Job!

I have some very exciting news, I have accepted the position of Art & Architecture Librarian. I am so pumped! When I entered my degree program, this is the kind of position I dreamed of getting. I am going to have a lot to learn, but will be joining an awesome team. I know I’m lucky to have found an amazing job in this job market, but it is possible to succeed.

In the course of relentlessly pursuing this position, I had to give a presentation on Technology & the Art Librarian. I presented on how Visual Literacy skills are vital if we want students to use the digital resources libraries are creating such as Digital Libraries or Institutional Repositories. See my tongue in cheek discussion of Visual Literacy over at the Desk Set’s blog. I’m posting my presentation slides over on my portfolio.

A Brave New World at NYPL

No doubt most people have heard about the pending reorganization at NYPL. I have no inside information, but as a user I certainly have an opinion. It is not one however of immediate revulsion nor praise. The plan is pretty simple, tear out the stacks that are the center of the 42nd Street Library, replace them with a modern 21st century public library designed by Norman Foster, close Mid-Manhattan and SIBL and fold their operations into 42nd Street. I want to take each of these actions one a time, so I can fully wrap my mind around the unending pros and cons. I’ve been bad at posting recently, but this semester has been quite an adventure. I’ve also been moonlighting over the at the Desk Set as March’s guest blogger. I’m putting up a companion piece over there that looks at the ramifications of this plan for the Art & Architecture Collection.

Remove the Stacks

The research library was built somewhat like so many other big research libraries, a doughnut shape with a jelly filling of stacks. And the stacks are closed, aka you request your books, you don’t find them yourself. Most big university have abandoned this model, whether they simply open their stacks, or tear them out and build a more modern area for shelves. I think I can pretty easily rule out open stacks at the research branch, I don’t trust the public that much… though I’m not sure why college students are thought to be so much more responsible. So you say why do things need to change? Well to be honest they don’t, I think the current system works great, but the stacks occupy a large chunk of valuable real estate in a landmark building, it’s not surprising someone wants to put it to another use. On the point of removing the stacks, I’m essentially neutral, certainly I see their value, but since I can’t go in, I can’t really appreciate them. I see the appeal of replacing this storage space with people space.

But the most major downside of this plan, is the removing of 2 million of 3.5 million books to offsite storage. This strikes me as simply wrong, a bad, horrible, no good idea. Now I’m am a big believer in offsite storage, shelf space is gold and not everything deserves it. But this seems to be a staggering number, a number that will seriously decimate research at NYPL (in fact, if we’re being literal, it’s much worse than than, far more than one of every ten). It’s already a trek to the library, I don’t want to be made to come back days later when my books are actually available. I love to find newly discovered citations waiting for me on the shelves. There are alternatives, such as onsite compact storage. NYPL could also alleviate some of the worst parts of off-site by implementing services such as scanned articles from periodicals and much faster turn around times. But as it stands, this seems to be severely sacrificing one of the library’s most redeeming qualities, as it is simply one of the best public research libraries in the world.

The Reading Room at NYPL's 42nd Street library

A modern Library

When I first moved to New York, I was actually quite surprised that it did not have a great circulating public library a la Seattle Public Library. When I first visited the 42nd Research Library, I thought this isn’t a public library! Of course it just wasn’t like any I’d ever been to before, but it has it’s own unique charms. However, it certainly does not fill the needs that are met by a world-class public library in the 21st century sense. The Mid-Manhattan library attempts to live up to that goal. To put it lightly it fails miserably. It is ugly, it is dirty, it is badly designed, outdated, over-crowded and broken. When I told a friend we could study there she said, “You mean the one with all the crazy people?” I mean come on New York city, I know you can do better than this. It is the neglected Cinderella of the system, while the research branch spent millions on lights to illuminate its surface, this library fell into further disrepair all while meeting the information needs of so many more people than the 42nd street branch.

Building a new modern public library is I think an excellent use of funds and a badly needed service. Will placing it in the middle of the beautiful but fortress like 42nd street library be the best idea. I have my doubts, besides the tourists, it can already be a nightmare getting into and out of this building. Can these problems be solved? I sure hope so. Perhaps they’ll build a new entrance on Bryant park, that seems to make sense, though it would only further mar the historical integrity of the building. But whether that’s worth it is another question.

The backside of the 42nd Street Research Library

Closing Branches

Kids with no place to study now

This strikes me as the worst part of the deal. Libraries are supposed to fight to their last dying breadth against branch closings, not propose them! First it was the Donnell Library that closed, with the Children’s center opening at 42nd Street. The hotel chain who they sold the building to was supposed to build space for a library at this location, still hasn’t happened. Now the location where the kids in the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler do their Michelangelo research no longer exists. It’s sad. Mid-Manhattan maybe I can understand, it is right across the street from 42nd street. But they serve completely different purposes, 42nd street awes tourists and provides for serious researchers. Mid-Manhattan does everything else a public library needs to. Yes, it needs a renovation bad, and that was the original plan, until of course, budget cuts. SIBL seems like a defeat as well. I’ve never used this library, and I’ve heard it wasn’t very welcoming. But it represented a serious investment in the public availability of science research. Also, it’s far enough away to serve different people than 42nd Street. But alas progress will be financed by selling off these assets of NYPL, and it’s a bad deal.

Tags: 42nd Street, Donnell, Norman Foster, NYPL, SIBL, Swarzman

Pacific Standard Time

Banners for Pacific Standard Time at the Getty

Southern California is currently proclaiming its place in the history of art with a full court press. Over 60 shows are happening, all under the umbrella of Pacific Standard Time, spurred on by grants from the Getty (oh but they can’t afford BHA?). While I was in California for the holidays I saw two of the biggest shows: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in California Design and California Design: Living in a modern way. The two shows are practical opposites. The getty show doesn’t have all that much to work with, but it does a lot with it. The LACMA show has almost too much to work with, and the end result is jumbled.

Pacific Standard Time is presented thematically, and presents a history of Los Angeles art and artists that doesn’t just pigeonhole them into movements invented to describe New York art. The result is extremely coherent and educational for someone unfamiliar. There are some really wonderful pieces. David Hockney’s Splash visits from the Tate. There was also an excellent mini-exhibit put on by the conservation lab of De Wain Valentine’s Grey Column (excellent bit on the conservation of contemporary art, and the ethical dilemma it poses).

The catalog as I’ve come to expect from Getty Publications is outstanding, and comes with that stylish sophistication that big serious catalogs sometimes feel above. The catalog is really the meat of the show, as it is arguing for new ways of looking at LA art, at the influences from abroad, but more importantly from California itself from early muscle magazines to modern design. You get a sense of that in the show, but the catalog is meant to set the canon on LA art history. The section on David Hockney I thought was especially well done.

Ed Ruscha & David Hockney at the Getty

LACMA’s show on California design is a visual feast, but it takes its layout from a California house and has an open floor plan, which works great for indoor/outdoor living, not so great for an art exhibition. It has some big show stoppers like a Studebaker Avanti, an Airstream RV, and the Eameses’ living room, carted wholesale from their home in the Pacific Palisades (and lets just say they weren’t into decluttering back then). The show is ostensibly divided into themes like “selling California design” or “the California look”, …, but the curvy open arrangement means I could never quite tell which theme any object belonged to, it didn’t help that the relation between themes and objects seemed pretty tenuous in the first place. California Design of course is quite a bit more famous and written about than its art. So while the exhibit was beautiful (and it was, don’t get me wrong, it was stunning), there wasn’t much new there, and the attempt to add didactic themes was not successful. The show’s biggest achievement is its incredibly broad array of objects from furniture, fashion, graphic design, ceramics, textiles, etc etc, it really showed how all encompassing the esthetic was. But it was this broad array that also made the show seem unfocused.

The California Design show at LACMA

After getting the catalog I noticed that the show was supported by Mattel, whose original Barbie was featured in the show, and a reissue of said Barbie was available in the Gift shop. This relationship made me extremely uncomfortable. This harks back to the issue I brought up in my previous posts, are the curators giving Mattel the imprimatur of art in exchange for monetary support of the exhibition? My guess is that it is not in any way so quid-pro-quot, but enough that such apparent conflicts of interest should be avoided. The circumspect researcher should look askance at the catalog’s placing of Barbie with the other icons of California Modern.

Pretty Exhibition Catalogs

The show was, in my opinion, shown up by its much less showy neighbor, on the art of colonial Latin America. I’ve taken a class both on Aztec art and on the art of the new world contact, so it was quite impressive the number of objects they obtained for the show. My absolute favorite piece (which was new to me) was a vessel that the Aztecs would have put sacrificial hearts in, that the missionaries had turned into a baptismal font (the potential analysis of this appropriation kinda makes my head explode). This show was split up into room (see museums don’t just do this for fun) that progressed through pre-contact, the art of conquest, and the interesting hybrid of religion, race, and culture that developed. The catalog will be an invaluable source on a hot topic in art history.

Folding screen map of Mexico City

What this whole event makes me as a Librarian think about is how do you go about recording this event and saving its history for posterity. As the Pacific Standard Time catalog says, it’s more than a show, but is a part of the history of art itself now. Documenting the ephemera like the PST website, all the supplemental materials from events, openings, and galleries, it’s quite a task that hopefully someone is paying attention to.

Tags: california, getty, lacma, mid-century design, pacific standard time

That’s by Caravaggio?

Caravaggio's Flagelation of Christ

For Christmas I was very happy to receive Sebastian Schutze’s Caravavaggio: The Complete Works. First of all it is just an over the top gorgeous book. Of course it’s oversize nature will make it a tough fit on a regular height shelf, it’s a coffee table book that makes you realize you need a nicer coffee table. The huge pictures are all wonderfully done, the close ups are stunning, you can see the cracks in the paint and the weave of the canvas. It even has fold-outs, so I was sold! With this book you can get closer to the works then is possible in person (not that it can compare in any way to that singular experience).

Although the pictures are wonderful, I really have no great love for books heavy on images and light on any other redeeming value. Lucikly this book delivers on that front as well. The main text, though not a proper biography, highlights the main points of art historical discussion, pointing out scholarly disagreements, admitting holes in our knowledge, and generally giving a good sketch of what we think we know now. Unfortunately you can’t exactly curl in a comfy chair with the book, if you try to rest it on your legs it will cut off their blood supply. The meatiest part comes at the end, with the catalogue raisonne, listing all the works by Caravaggio, their history and current location (perfect for planning your Caravaggio centered travel). It has been enormously helpful at clearing up the confusion and anxiety that I feel every time I visit the Caravaggio wikipedia page, which always makes me go “That’s by Caravaggio?!” as I question that I know anything at all. Turns out many of the works listed on wikipedia are as I had suspected copies of lost originals by Caravaggio, but these copies have been sometimes said to be the real deal. Caravaggio has always been controversial, and his attributions are no different. Although Schutze takes a mostly neutral stance, his thoughts are implicit in the separation out of the merely attributed works. He carefully notes which particular scholars think a work is autograph, what the documents say, the provenance (aka the succession of owners), as well as some light connoisseurship. The works attributed to Caravaggio by other scholars generally range from possible, to unlikely, to what are you smoking, are you blind, really, really?!

Caravaggio's The Conversion of St. Paul

This brings me to my next subject, evaluating art historical information, which in view of competing attributions, can be quite difficult in figuring out who to trust. The biggest complicating factor is money, the market, and prestige. An attribution to a famous artist can be worth millions to a private collector or art dealer, for a museum it’s worth visitors and name recognition. Of course, art historians generally call it like they see it, and uphold a high standard of impartiality, as much as it pains collectors to get the bad news or museum to attach the dreaded “school of …” to their label. Reading through the Caravaggio catalogue it seems clear which scholars are consistently attributing works that subsequently are not accepted by the rest of the community. I do not mean to necessarily impugn these scholars as it is perfectly legitimate to have an expansive view of an artist’s oeuvre, but it shouldn’t be surprising either that these same authors are the most sought after for opinions on authenticity.

Caravaggio's Head of Medusa

The practical result is that the student of art history has to be extra careful to review all the scholarship (or at least a recent summation), and not rely on the one JSTOR article that says a work of art is the product of a particular artist. The relationship between the artist and the work is a foundation of art historical analysis, but for many works this identification is a theory not an axiom. A catalogue raisonne is an excellent source to check the reliability of an author or an attribution, and formulate your own conclusion on a work. When writing an analysis of a work of art, it is important to know if you are in safe territory and can proceed with certainty about the authorship of your subject, or whether you are on the outskirts of art historical consensus, and should certainly acknowledge the doubt as well as provide your own line of reasoning as to a work’s authenticity.

Hopefully this post was enlivened by my photographs of Caravaggio’s work, which since they are pretty securely attributed are irrelevant to the content.

Tags: Art History, attribution, caravaggio, catalogue raisonne, close ups, coffee table book

Cultural Tour of Pittsburgh

I spent this holiday weekend in Pittsburgh, so of course I had to go to the museums and the Carnegie Library. It certainly has that run-down steel town that is now revitalizing feel. Also plenty of bridges and I love bridges.

The Warhol Museum: I enjoyed the Alex Ross exhibit of Comic illustration. I’ve been a long time graphic novel fan, but besides Watchmen I have not read any classic super hero comics. This exhibit certainly made me change my mind. Hopefully once the semester ends I’ll have time to read Kingdom Come and Marvels. Although the Museum is quite large, I was disappointed by the small number of actual Warhol paintings. I was expecting the motherload and what I got was probably the same amount that would be found at many other museums not named after Warhol. One floor was dedicated to his videos which was really lost on me, are there really people who sit in museums and watch video after video. Perhaps if I was not time constrained I would have watched one. I found the mini-exhibit on each floor to be lacking as well. However the Warhol silver-cloud room is amazing and I could spend hours in there acting like a small child.

The Mattress Factory: An awesome gem in a beautiful neighborhood of old houses. All the artists live in the neighborhood and create installation art in the museum. I’m always nervous about walk into the art installations after I accidentally walked into a string and caused a chain reaction of destruction at the Venice Biennale, however there were no mishaps this time. Highlights include Sarah Oppenheimer’s architectural floor cutout/view port that is definitely extremely dangerous to people who aren’t paying attention. The biggest reveal comes on the floor below when you see just how long the tunnel is, it appears optically very short on the top floor.

Sarah Oppenheimer's big ole hole in the floor

Pablo Valbuena’s Para-Site was quite cool, created by projecting image on the painted brink of the factory wall. Some groping though the dark was required to get in, and at least one actual wall was thought to be a door by me.

Pablo Valbuena's projection craziness

Of the permanent installations James Turrell of course has beautiful and vision bending work installed. His Pleiadesis a pitch black room that requires the viewer to hold a handrail and guide themselves to a chair. It so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, apparently if you let your eyes adjust for 15 minutes you can see a faint glowing craziness, however sitting in complete darkness for 15 minutes was impossible for me, so I will assume that was awesome. Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored dot rooms are an experience and photo op, and a rare chance to see this well known Japanese artist’s work in the US.

Striking a Pose in Yayoi Kusama's Dot Room

Carnegie Museum of Art: I insisted on coming here because I thought it’s permanent collection might contain some jewel that later I would kick myself for missing. I would think oh I really want to see that, hey it’s in Pittsburgh uuuughhh. But while their collection is good, it contains nothing really outstanding (at least germane to my interests). It does have lovely Cezanne, Rothko, and Millet paintings.  On the other hand, it’s current exhibition was exceptionally done. Teenie Harris Photographer: Image, Memory, History is beautifully installed. It contains 987 photographs from the Teenie Harris archive, recently acquired by the museum, which is cataloging and scanning all the negatives. The artist an African American photographer from the middle of the last century who captured life in the the Hill district of Pittsburgh. The most interesting part of the exhibit was the room filled with computers and forms. The forms were for attendees to contribute to the archive any bit of information they know about the photographs, or any stories they have to tell. It was full and many forms had been contributed. I think it was a successful example of crowd-sources (though it could probably be improved by moving the pen and paper forms online). The exhibition catalog is highly recommended.

Carnegie Library: As a Librarian I couldn’t resist taking a peak at the inside of this library. Although there are plenty of Carnegie Libraries around the country, this is certainly the mother ship. The building is beautiful, and it is part of the same complex that houses the natural history and art museum as well as the music hall.

"Free to the People"

My favorite part was that from the stacks you have a view of dinosaur skeletons in the natural history museum.

Jurasic Stacks

It was well staffed, had a nice teen room. They had renamed reference ask a librarian. A good idea if you ask me. I thought the renovation was a little too 1999 chic, I personally would have gone for a more classic look that would fit with the building more. They get props for not covering up or adding a drop ceiling (the horror!). But I feel the signage and some of the design now feels a bit dated.

The classic and the modern at Carnegie Library

Tags: Alex Ross, Carnegie Library, Carnegie Museum of Art, James Turrell, Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Library, Teenie Harris, Warhol, Warhol Museum

Omeka and Collective Access

Omeka and Collective Access are both open source content management systems. They take your digital assets and let you organize them, add metadata, and publish dynamically to the web.  They both excel at some of these tasks, just usually not the same ones.

Cataloging

Omeka:

• Omeka suffices just fine for cataloging in Dublin Core, by far the most common and standard metadata schema out there. It also offers item type metadata in order to add special fields for each type of media.
• There are plugins for other metadata schema such as VRA or MODS, but in the implementations I’ve seen them they are just over-layed on top of dublin core.
• The Metadata in Omeka is very flat, hierarchies aren’t really covered out of the box, nor relationships between items.

Collective Access:

• This round certainly goes to Collective Access. Besides built in support for several schema, there is the ability to build your own custom system (I haven’t figured out how yet…).
• It also allows for rich relationship building both between items, related items, and their representations (aka separate metadata for the photo of an item). But also for the creation of entities like people or places, and to link them with items through a variety of relationships. So that all the pictures of one location is linked to a place, and all the works of one artist is linked to a page for them.
• Collective Access is truly ideal for 21st century rich cataloging and FRBRizing digital libraries

The Web

Omeka:

• The web component of Omeka is very strong. The ability to choose themes and the preponderance of plugins means that a site can look reasonably good with no coding. To really perfect any of them some use of HTML and CSS will be necessary. The willingness to get in and mess around is also crucial for slightly mixing up the PHP (you might also want to at least understand the concept of php).
• The web component is part of the same backend web interface as cataloging and so it is easily possible to change many of the appearances and functionality of the site without ever editing code. This is especially true in regards to the exhibits plugin, with which backend users can create full multi-page exhibits without resorting to any file changing.
• The Plug-ins mean you can create features on your site that could be a long and difficult process to code yourself

Collective Access:

• Unfortunately their web component Pawtucket does not have back end manipulation. It certainly seems harder to get a website up to snuff.
• Additionally without as many plugins as Omeka it will be harder to add bells and whistles to your site like geolocation or document viewing.
• However, the ability to build on top of the rich cataloging opens up all sorts of possibilities. The new museum archive’s site is built on collective access and is so nice. Clearly it can be done. Notice the way they have artist pages and exhibition pages that link to associated artworks. Good cataloging here translates into browsability and allows exploration

Collective Access also has a nice default web set-up, as this image of my experimental Caravaggio collection shows. Customizing seemed incredibly daunting.

Ease of Use

Omeka:

• The backend is relatively intuitive, it isn’t hard to add items and their metadata. Most things that could be confusing have little explanations attached.
• Once the look of the front end is set up, most editing can be done without coding knowledge. Other colleagues can upload content, create collections, curate exhibits all through the user interface. Columbia library uses Omeka to let librarians create digital exhibitionsuses the web interface.
  

  Omeka's intuitive Backend makes writing a manual virtually unnecessary

Collective Access:

• Cataloging can be confusing on collective access, many things aren’t explained. I think I’m pretty smart and beyond the basics it was not intuitive to do things like set up controlled vocabularies.
• I encountered a few bugs. Browsing your items was cumbersome.
• But creating relations was actually quite easy and it builds in creating name and place authorities. Which is super slick and nice

Conclusion

The choice really comes down to priorities. Is the cataloging important and do you have the time and money to do it? Then Collective access is your choice.

Is getting up on the web quickly and easily your plan, go with Omeka. Do you want to empower computer non-savy people to create content? Then you go with Omeka.

Of course it isn’t always an either/or, you can create your content management system and collective archive using collective access while uploading limited numbers of item to Omeka to allow the creation of exhibits.

Tags: Collective Access, Content Management Systems, Digital Libraries, Dublin Core, Metadata, Omeka, PHP