For this week’s blog, I chose to review Identities: Understanding Islam in a Cross-Cultural Context which is hosted on an Omeka platform. It can be found at http://marb.kennesaw.edu/identities/.
The project was created by Museums and Community Collaborations Abroad (MCAA). Its aim was to use a variety of sources to create an exhibit that examined the cultural similarities and differences between the materials (especially oral histories and photographs) in a museum in Morocco and the materials from a museum in Georgia. MCAA planned to analyze these materials and infer how identities are formed in immigrant communities, both in Morocco and Georgia.
Though not explicitly stated, it seems like the site is meant to appeal to a general audience, and especially highlight and connect with immigrant Muslim communities. The central question the project asks is how identities are formed in these communities, both in Morocco and Georgia. The project also centers on the idea of integrating community in general—by featuring community input in the exhibit, the project becomes a community itself.
Identities is an easy project to explore. My favorite aspect is that it’s structured, but still allows the user to take their own path through the website. The homepage uses a slideshow tool to draw in the user and highlight various parts of the exhibit. Because the slideshow never goes in the same order twice, users can expect to explore a different part of the exhibit each time they visit. The writing on the website is informative and interesting without being dense, especially with regard to the photo captions.
The website features an about page that provides a comprehensive overview of the project and all the museums and organizations that helped to make it. However, there is not information about the specific digital tools they used to make the website. The metadata on the website is comprehensive and follows dublincore formatting.
Identities’s most compelling feature that distinguishes it from a traditional research paper or exhibit is how easily a user can bring themselves into the website’s narrative. A tab on the home page named “talk back” allows users to either share their story or answer a survey that asks questions about how the user views Islam or what further topics they’d want to see included in the exhibit. Instead of being a passive experience, Identities is active because it fully immerses and incorporates the user.
While very much an Omeka site, it does enough customization to make it feel like less of one, and the narrative element is drawn together well. I think the resources page is a great addition for this project, since it aims to help educate others and give them resources to learn more. This might be a useful section for your site as well, if you wanted to help your users better understand the groups involved in social justice movements, or how to get involved (or start one!). While your projects are academic by nature, there’s nothing that says you can’t inject a bit of activism in your work.