Yale University Library Research Guides: Online Exhibitions: Resources & Best Practices

Online Exhibitions Best Practices

Consider your audience: Who are you designing the site for? What is the awareness of the subject?
Narrative: What story are you hoping to tell? What do you hope people take away from the exhibition?
Design: Make the exhibit visually interesting with a variety of images. Consider breaking up large boxes of text with images. Build the site in layers to provide multiple spaces for visitors to experience.
Web accessibility: To meet requirements for web accessibility, please refer to Yale's resources: https://usability.yale.edu/web-accessibility/accessibility
File Sizes: Maximum image file size is 10MB, minimum image dimension (width or height) is 1000 pixels. Preferred still image file type is JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg) though PNG (.png) is also acceptable.
Metadata: Consider your audience again with level of description. In most cases, a detailed catalog record with all metadata fields is not necessary, but an exhibit visitor should be able to get to an authoritative representation of the item, such as by including an ArchivesSpace or ORBIS URL or a handle permalink. Exhibitions highlight collections, and visitors should be able to see more about those collections or even to take steps toward view collection contents in YUL reading rooms.

YUL Online Exhibits Handbook
Start here! This handbook was created by the Online Exhibitions Committee with step-by-step instructions and guidance on building out your site.
Omeka S User Manual
This user manual was created by the Omeka community. It may contain other useful info as you build your site.

Yale University Library's Online Exhibition Policy
This document includes details on Yale Library's Online Exhibition policies. We recommend reviewing this document before submitting an exhibition proposal.

Omeka S Bulk Upload Template
CSV file for entering metadata for multiple Items at once. Contains example Item metadata and defined values for selected fields. See the handbook for how to make use of this file. The file can be opened by Microsoft Excel or plaintext editors such as TextEdit on Mac or Notepad on Windows
Omeka Banner Template
This template is sized for the appropriate banner dimensions. Simply add your image to the template to generate a new banner.

To create an exhibition, the general workflow steps are:

1. Create a new Item Set

2. Create Items that are assigned to the Item Set

3. Create a new Site

4. Create a Page in the Site

5. Add Blocks to the Page that include Items you created

Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have completed your exhibition. Then,

6. Create a banner for the header image

7. Publish the exhibition by changing all Media, Items, Item Sets, and the Site from “Private” to “Public”

Copyright Guidance: Using Copyrighted Works
This guide was created by Yale's Copyright and Licensing Librarian. It includes information on evaluating copyright and tools for making a fair use evaluation.
Fair Use Evaluator
A tool to help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code.
Yale Fair Use Analysis Tool
Yale's Fair Use Analysis Tool guides you through an analysis of your project/work in terms of the four factors. You best know how you want to incorporate third party copyrighted works into your own.