Using Omeka and Neatline to Build an Interactive Campus Map

The Illinois Institute of Technology campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, and contains a building, Mies van der Rohe's S.R. Crown Hall, that was named a National Historic Landmark in 2001. Our goal was to showcase the campus, its architecture, and the university’s history via a dynamic digital resource. This talk covers the conception, development, and design of the campus map site that was built using Omeka, along with the Neatline, Waypoints and Simile Timeline plugins, to allow users to explore the campus and see how it has changed over the institution’s 125 year history.

We’ll discuss the entire arc of the project, including selecting software, identifying hardware needs, setting project goals, determining our audience, and working with university stakeholders. We’ll delve into our decision-making process regarding content selection and presentation, including the juggling act of designing for mobile mapping functionality without sacrificing desktop design. We’ll also discuss the challenge of building a site that can be developed iteratively, with an eye towards future enhancement and sustainability.

Creating a digital resource of this nature is challenge enough in and of itself, but doing so as a two-person team of relative newcomers, at a university library without dedicated programmers on staff, ups the ante considerably. Attendees will leave this presentation not just with an understanding of our project, but with suggestions on how to approach challenging digital projects at their own institution.