I've built digital collections on Omeka and on SobekCM (both on that helpful foss4lib list) Omeka is definitely easy to get up and running and you can even host a small collection free on the omeka.net site. The drawback is in the back-end management - if you want to import a lot of items in bulk or do mass-updating or work with non-Dublin Core xml metadata or any of those sorts of management things you'll be much happier with something else. I have been using Sobek for a while - it's open-source and industrial-strength. It does require a steeper learning curve, though it's less steep than the Fedora-based repositories. Also the documentation is top-notch very detailed. Also the developer is now running a hosting service with reasonable fees if you are running a medium-to-large sized institutional collection they are at sobekdigital.com
One other extremely helpful piece of software that I wish I'd know about long ago is called VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/ it's billed as "the software that should have shipped with your scanner" it costs $40 and is worth every penny. Good luck! On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Matthew Sherman <matt.r.sher...@gmail.com> wrote: > There are a few options you can go with. > https://foss4lib.org/package-type/digital-repository has a nice list of > open source solutions. Just remember with open source you need to have > some tech savy staff to support the software. I know a lot of people who > like Omeka for free digital collection software. I am using DSpace right > now for an institutional repository, it can be used for digital collections > but it is not the best since that was not what it was built for. ContentDM > is a popular pay for solution. Still, I would check out that list, and > demo Omeka on their site. There are plenty of other considerations you > need to make as well but these should help start you off specifically with > the questions you asked. > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 4:55 PM, P.G. <booksbyp...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > Anyone has experience in digitizing archival materials? I need your > > recommendations/suggestions on how we can start with our digitization. We > > need to build a searchable website so the public can access our materials > > of images, publications and media files. > > > > What platform did you use? Open-source or fee-base? What is your > experience > > using it? > > > > Basically, we started using Sharepoint but at this point, I believe it is > > only good for sharing of internal documents. We are on a limited budget > so > > we may need to host it on our own server as well. > > > > Any feedback or persons to contact for more info is highly appreciated. > > Thanks. > > > > Chris > > >
