Ibali Iindaba: One for the Libraries - Silent Launch of Digital Collections at UCT Online
In the past year our new showcasing site, Ibali Digital Collections UCT, has gone live. We have been having regular monthly webinars, Ibali Iindabas, talking about and demonstrating various aspects of the platform. For the last edition of our webinar for 2021, we want to invite all those who work in the libraries to a dedicated session to look at how Ibali fits within UCT Libraries. We will take a brief look at how the site works, showcase some collections that are useful for teaching and learning, and look at how we can use the platform to showcase ourselves, as UCT Libraries, and our collections.
Read more about Ibali
- Date:
- Wednesday 10 November 2021
- Time:
- 1:00pm - 2:00pm
- Time Zone:
- Central Africa Time (change)
- Online:
- This is an online event. Event URL will be sent via registration email.
- Audience:
- All
- Categories:
- DLS events
Digital Library Services (DLS) will be launching a university-wide showcase website for digital collections, Ibali, powered by Omeka S. Currently in the developing and testing phase, Ibali is part of a UCT Libraries drive to nurture an Open Access space where institutional collections can be created, curated, published and showcased. Together with the UCT's community of data stewards, we are building our own GLAM Lab.
Omeka S is a web publishing platform for GLAMs (Galleries | Libraries | Archives | Museums), designed to create relationships between objects in collections as well as describe them through linked open data resources on the internet. The ‘S’ in Omeka S stands for ‘semantic’, as in connecting to the semantic web, where data in web pages is structured and tagged. Its primary focus is on organizing elements of a collection such that the links in between items and the greater elements of the internet are strengthened, allowing for much more relevant searches and deeper explorations.
A digital collection showcase on Ibali will allow users to experience their own ‘stories’ by navigating the links between items and through collections. With its campus-wide launch, members of the UCT community will be able to organize their own collections, build their own linkages, and publish them as shared stories. DLS will provide support and training as well as guidance throughout the process for data stewards building collections.
As part of preparing for the launch, DLS is running monthly workshop sessions. Each session has its own theme and will focus on a different aspect of the Omeka S software. This will give participants an opportunity to get familiar with the new Ibali platform from using it to building sites of collections.
