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What Is A Car Chassis? What Every Driver Should Know

2020-04-11T04:32:19.000Z

Have you ever heard someone talking about a car’s chassis and wondered what they were talking about? You are not the only one. With close to 30,000 parts on a car, it would take years of studying to be able to recognize each part. Car chassis are one of the most important parts of a vehicle. We’ve researched a ton of information and compiled it into this article so you can learn what a car chassis is and what purpose it serves.

A chassis is the framework of a car. Its purpose is to bear the load of the vehicle by providing a solid support structure for everything. This is accomplished through the body being mounted on top of the chassis.

Keep reading below as we answer some more frequently asked questions about car chassis.

What Types Of Chassis Are There?

All cars are not built the same. In fact, not all chassis are built the same. Generally speaking, there are four different types of chassis. Here are all four types along with a short explanation about each one.

1. Ladder Chassis

You might be able to guess this one, but the reason it is called a ladder chassis is because it resembles a ladder. A ladder chassis is number one on the list because it is how all car chassis used to be made. These days, ladder chassis are primarily used in commercial vehicles and cars that are meant for going off road. As technology has advanced, this form of a chassis has become less than ideal for the everyday car.

2. Backbone Chassis

This type of chassis is one of the more simple types. As the name suggests, it is comprised of one “backbone” that connects the suspension in the front and back. The backbone is another classic type of chassis and can be found in many different classic vehicles. The most popular car to have this type of chassis is the DMC “DeLorean” seen in the film Back to the Future.

3. Space Frame Chassis

You see this type of chassis a lot in race cars and other special vehicles. This chassis is basically tube-shaped with pieces of metal welded together to form the tube. Because all the parts are connected, the entire frame is able to absorb any load felt on a certain point. This chassis is more sturdy.

4. Monocoque Chassis

The Monocoque chassis is an extremely unique chassis and looks different on every vehicle. This is because it is a mixture of the body and the chassis. The body and chassis are one big piece of metal. Another example of this is most boats. They are all one big piece of metal — which is how they stay afloat. The first car with this type of chassis was the 1962 Lotus 25.

Not all cars have a specific type of chassis from this list. Some have a combination of a few of them. Car engineers are constantly innovating and working to create new technology and see what works most efficiently.

What Is The Purpose Of A Chassis?

A chassis provides the foundation for a vehicle so that the rest of it is supported. But what exactly does that mean? Why does a vehicle need a chassis? Since a vehicle has a lot of parts and the only thing touching the ground is the wheels, there needs to be a sturdy base layer for everything to rest on.

This is where the chassis comes in. As we discussed previously, we saw they were built to protect everything inside the car as well. Because a lot can happen on and off the road, the chassis works as a barrier to keep everything safe and in one place.

What Is The Difference Between A Frame And A Chassis?

Despite what it may seem like, the frame and chassis are two different parts that are fastened together to serve one purpose.

The frame primarily holds the body of the vehicle, seats, and passengers, and it distributes the weight well when the vehicle goes over unstable terrain.

The chassis, on the other hand, deals with every other part of the vehicle such as the engine, fuel tank, breaks, tires, suspension, etc. The chassis is often described as the “skeletal framework” of a car.

All in all, the frame of the car supports all of the accessories a vehicle has. The chassis supports all the essential, defining elements of a vehicle.

Do Modern Cars Have A Chassis?

Yes. Almost all vehicles today are equipped with a monocoque chassis. Generally, this is the best technology to have been invented in terms of a chassis. Making its debut in 1962, it is one of the newest types that keeps getting improved upon with every new vehicle.

It works well because as a car’s body is continuously refined and modernized, a monocoque chassis will be created around it and will therefore improve as well. There’s no need to stick to a specific template like other chassis.

Can You Replace A Car Chassis?

This question does not have a straightforward answer. In some cases, you may be able to replace a chassis, but in most cases, you probably cannot. Older vehicles that have a ladder chassis or something similar may be able to have parts of a chassis (or the entire thing) replaced. This would likely be extremely expensive because this is a large and crucial part of your vehicle, and it would be very time-intensive and laborious.

This, of course, would require almost a complete disassembly of your car. One alternative to consider before going down this road is: can the chassis be repaired and not replaced? Most of the time, if you suspect you need a new chassis it is because you got in a nasty wreck that bent and warped your vehicle beyond drivability. Take your car to a reputable mechanic or dealer and have them diagnose your problem to see if it can be replaced or repaired.

A total replacement may cost thousands of dollars, possibly well over $10,000. In many cases, you may be able to have your vehicle’s chassis repaired and reshaped, which could only cost you $600-$2,000 at most, depending on the damage.

What About On Modern Cars?

As we learned, most modern cars have a monocoque chassis, which means its body and chassis are all connected and are basically the same. If this is the case, you only have two roads you can go down.

The first is to get it repaired if possible. See if a mechanic is able to reshape your body/chassis for you at an affordable cost. The second is to just buy a new car. With a monocoque chassis, you will basically be replacing the entire car to replace the chassis since it is made up of the entire vehicle.

How Do You Check The Chassis Of A Car?

The chassis number on your car is almost the same thing as a VIN number. The VIN number is often referred to as the chassis number because it is sometimes stamped to the chassis of your vehicle; the nickname stuck. Specifically, the chassis number is the last 6 digits of your VIN number.

These last 6 numbers contain specific information pertaining to your vehicle. In other words, it tells you what your vehicle was fitted with and what options were built into it.

In Closing

A car’s chassis is an essential part of your vehicle. Just like a house with no foundation, your car would fall apart without a chassis. Regardless of what kind of chassis your vehicle has, each of them is uniquely engineered to serve the same purpose.

Don’t miss out on these other great automotive guides –

How Many Axles Does A Car Have?

9 Companies That Buy Junk Cars

History of psychology

2020-04-05T08:38:33.000Z

<img src=”https://enacademic.com/pictures/enwiki/52/40px-Psi2.svg.png" /><br/> The history of psychology as a scholarly study of the mind and behavior dates back to the Ancient Greeks. There is also evidence of psychological thought in ancient Egypt. Psychology was a branch of philosophy until the 1870s, when psychology…

enacademic.com/dic.nsf/e…

The Murder of Bruce Miller

2020-01-07T05:00:00.000Z

This week we’re telling another tale of internet-based murder, but instead of luring victims with the internet, this week’s mastermind used the internet to manipulate a former law enforcement officer to commit murder.

For 10% off your standard badge to Crimecon, use our code MANDM2020!

Check out the promo at the end of the episode for the Scene of the Crime Podcast!

Thank you to this week’s sponsors!

Go to hellonoemie.com/MOMS to see their collections and get $50 your first purchase with promo code MOMS.

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If you have a hero in your life you’d like to nominate, email us at LastThingBeforeWeGo@gmail.com and put “Hero” as the subject.

If you’d like to support The Mom’s and get some fun perks, including bonus episodes and early release- ad free episodes, you can check out our Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/momsandmurderpodcast.

As always, you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, and on our website at https://momsandmurder.com.

Make sure you subscribe and rate our show to help others find us!

We updated our merch store, you can find that at momsandmurder.threadless.com!

Connect with us on social media at:Facebook.com/MomsAndRedRumInstagram: @MomsAndMurderTwitter.com/MomsAndMurder

Sources:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

THE INFORMATION #1059 AUGUST 23, 2019

2019-08-14T21:32:13.000Z

THE INFORMATION #1059

AUGUST 23, 2019
Copyright 2019 FRANCIS DIMENNO
dimenno@gmail.com
https://dimenno.wordpress.com

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.–Gertrude Stein

WHEN THIS WORLD CATCHES FIRE
BOOK THREE: SAVAGE NOXTOWN
CHAPTER TWELVE: PART SEVENTY-SIX: THE EASTERN GATE OF PARADISE
Everyone but Doc and the Judge were shocked by the appearance of a black slave in their midst, and took no pins to conceal their mingled curiosity and dismay. They watched as Shadwell Shass cautioned young Mingo by saying, “I want you to be nice today, and not full of sass. Speak only when spoken to, do ye hear? Unless you want a few more stripes.”

Mingo said nothing, but nodded his head in miserable dumb acquiescence.He was dressed in a pair of tattered short pantaloons and a tow-linen shirt, and he wore no shoes.

Shadwell Shass turns to the assembled and said, with a crooked smile, “I hate to have to whip the boy. I do. But how else will he ever learn to comport himself in polite society?”

Mountain Man Wray, from off in his corner, mutters, “Well…it WAS per’lite sassiety…until you walked in.”

Shadwell Shass turns to Mountain man Wray and said, “Why, surely you, of all people, know of the old saying: ‘A dog, a slave, and a hickory tree, the more you beat ’em, the better they be.'”

“Seems to me he ain’t no dog.”

“Why, sure he is, MISTER Wray. And don’t you know, Sir, that dogs love you the better for kickin’ ’em?”

While this exchange was going on, most of the assembled have gotten over their numb shock at seeing a genuine blackamoor and begin to comment on the phenomenon aloud, in the way of unsophisticated back-country people.

Dorn whispers to Hack, “Why, he’s as black as a crow.”

Hack whispers back, “As black as the parson’s hat.”

Sam Tyler the apothecary, who was sometimes possessed of a poetic turn, says, “Why, he’s as black as melted midnight.”

Looking to promote a ruckus, the sharp-tongued Norm Norman deems Mingo, “As black as the devil’s arse,”

“As black as God’s Ape,” says trapper Gibson Gloeckner, not to be outdone.

“Black as raven,” mutters Dunc Duncan, the bootmaker, cobbler, and secret bootlegger

“As black as Black Betty,” says Ezekial Teal the tapster, referring to the dark stock of an old-time musket.

“As black as death,” says the funereal horse-doctor Andy Struck, whose joints were bothering him.

“As dark as Egypt,” says Doc Sheldrake.

“As black as ebony,” says old Judge Ross, who adds, fixing a weather eye on Shadwell Shass,”Crine ruber, niger ore, brevis pede, lumine laesus,
rem magnam praestas, Zoile, si bonus es.’

Shass figures he’s been insulted, but, rather than reveal his utter unfamiliarity with the savage wit of Martial, pleasantly replies, “And I’m sure, Judge, that the same goes for you.”

At this, the judge smiles, for he is neither red-haired nor black-mouthed nor lame-footed nor squint-eyed; and, as a proud man, he also considers himself to be thoroughly honorable.

“I say–he’s as black as a very printer’s devil!” says the irrepressible Ezekial Teal the tapster, who fancied himself something of a bon vivant.

“Eww,” squeals the Widow Alice Bune, “He’s black as PITCH. And he SMELLS!”

Not to be out-done, the daring young Miz Dora Norflus, seeking to entice the bachelors into flirting with her, says “He’s black as soot. May I touch his hair, Mister Shass?”

“Sure you can Miz Norflus,” says Shadwell Shass with a laugh, flirting right back, “But just make sure that none o’ that thar soot rubs off on them pretty little hands o’ yourn.”

Dora Norflus tiptoes up to Mingo, touches his matted, nappy hair, and squeals, draws her hand back, and retreats backward as few steps, as though she has just touched an exceptionally cold chunk of ice.

Judge Ross wryly comments, quoting Horace, “pudicitiam, et pudorem, et sedatam cupidinem.”

“Are you making fun of me?” says Dora Norflus.

“No, Madam, I am merely complimenting you on your modesty and restraint,” says the sardonic Judge.
Dora Norflus unleashes her most dazzling smile. The old Judge winks and nods.

As though a gate were suddenly left unhitched, members of the assembled company, with the conspicuous exception of the Widow Bune, all approach Mingo and begin touching his head. Mingo, humiliated, but fearful of a whipping, bows his head and says nothing.

“It’s dry,” says Zeke Teal.

“It’s dirty,” says Dorn Purson.

“It’s thick,” says Sam Tyler.

“It feels like uncarded wool,” says Hack Purson.

“Does it ever grow out ?” says Andy Struck.

“That’s a curious question for a horse-doctor,” says Doc Sheldrake. “Of course it grows out! Let us see, Doctor, if you recollect your Virgil: “Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.”

Andy Struck, of course, knows no Virgil, or any Latin at all, but he puffs himself up and says “Yes, Doctor, quite so, quite so.” Noting the look of pleased surprise on Doc Sheldrake’s face, Struck is well-chuffed at his own shrewd guess.

“Ain’t it somethin’,” says Norm Norman. “It’s rather…oily. Why won’t you come and touch it, Mrs. Bune?”

“Eww! No! It might have bugs in it!” she replies, and shrinks back.

“Well, I, for one, wouldn’t touch a hair of that black rascal’s head,” says Gibson Gloeckner. “Who knows but that he might have some kind of damn disease he brought over from darkest Africa.”

Shadwell Shass allows himself to appear affronted. “Why, no, Gib, upon my honor, this boy was born right here in Amerikay!”

“What is he, Shad–your bastard?” says Norm Norman, and instantly regrets it, for Shadwell, quick as lightning, pulls out a flintlock pistol and levels it directly in a line with Norman’s heart.

“Oh, you WOULD say so, would you?” says Shad.

“Um, er…” says the flustered Norm Norman.

“I’m sure he meant no harm of it,” booms Judge Ross.

Shad lowers his pistol.

“I find myself inclined to defer to your wisdom, Judge,” says he.

“Aquila non capit muscas” mutters the judge, with a friendly smile for which he does not, however, show his teeth.

Norm Norman says no more, for the interim.

To break the ice, Sam Tyler, the pharmacist, rubs his hand over the slave’s head, feeling the bumps. “A decidedly thick skull. Indicates to me a lack of gray matter. A diminished faculty for perspicacity or forethought. I can tell you no more than that. The wool gets in the way.”

And then Andy Struck makes bold enough to stride over to the boy and pull his gums apart to examine his teeth. “A good strong set of gums. Teeth are pretty good.”

If Shadwell Shass is offended by the two men pawing over his property in such a way, then under the benign jurisdiction of Judge Ross, he is quite circumspect and does not show it.

Doc Sheldrake rather rudely pushes the pharmacist and the horse-doctor aside and commences his own examination of the boy. First, he feel his ribs. Then he says, softly and soothingly, “Breathe, my lad.” Mingo takes a deep breath, and lets it out again, with a perturbed sigh. Next, Doc lifts the boy’s shirt and puts his ear up to the his chest and listens to his heart. From the corner, the Widow Bune squeals, “Eww!”

Shadwell Shass looks inquiringly at the Doctor, who loses no time in delivering his verdict. “Sound heart. Good lungs. He’ll likely outlive us all. But he seems a bit undernourished.”

“Why, Doc, he eats the same things I eat!”

“Mmm, and what would that be? Hog and hominy? Try feeding him some fresh fruits and vegetables every once in a while. It wouldn’t hurt you any either to try some.”

“You’re the Doctor,” says Shadwell Shass, with a baleful look at Mingo.

Mingo knows well what this look portends, and shivers, ever so slightly.

Neither Doc nor the old Judge fail to notice the slave’s distress.

But they say nothing; for there is nothing to be said.

*1 SALUTATION

THE DUKES OF STRATOSPHEAR

BIKE RIDE TO THE MOON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDKZqZ8bsDs

*2 REFERENCE

COOKIE PUSHER
https://enacademic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11576515

CAKE EATER
https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/54/messages/498.html

FUDGE PACKER
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fudge_packer

3*HUMORHORROR MOVIES FOR DOGS

Lightning Never Bites Twice In the Same Place
The Thing in the Garbage Disposal
The Day the Treats Stood Still.
The Man With the Rolled-Up Newspaper
Attack of the Six-foot Pom
Thunder and Lightning
I Am A Fugitive from a Municipal Dog Pound
Old Yeller Returns
Dawg Day Afternoon
The Dogs Must Be Crazy
Heel!
The Vacuum Cleaner Monster. –rms
The Invasion Of The Tennis Ball Snatchers –mr. shh
Final Defecation –mr. shh
The Lords Of Peopletown –mr. shh
Training Day –mr. shh
Night of the Living Vet –in the woods
The Blair Bitch Project –in the woods
The Ringworm –in the woods
The Last Car Ride –inthewoods
“N” is for Neuter –rick o’shea
Kennel of 1000 Corpses –rick o’shea
I Piss On Your Hydrant –rick o’shea
The Bitches of Eastwick –wtfjones
The Howling –wtfjones
The Boneyard –wtfjones
Rin Tin Tinman –wtfjones
Damian: The Owner –wtfjones
The Hump Leg of Notre Dame –wtfjones
The Beast Beneath the Stairs –wtfjones
I know What Skunk You Killed Last Summer –wtfjones
The Big Sleep –woodymg
Kennel Coffin –danpm
Dude Where’s My Balls? –danpm
I Pull On Your Tail –danpm
Paws –danpm
Chuck Wagon’s Revenge –danpm
The Postman always Kicks Twice –jujuagogo
The Last Vet on the Left –jujuagogo
People Cemetary –jujuagogo

4*NOVELTY

BEST OSCAR PICTURE WINNERS, RANKED

https://www.newsweek.com/all-best-picture-oscar-winners-ranked-according-critics-1022819?fbclid=IwAR2eET3Ls1c_bqvdU6GiN5oan59mdEAQ8GMYcChT9T3KwtTIKV5rkn0XVTo

5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST

RICE A RONI THE SAN FRANCISCO TREAT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qV2Pkq1ltA

6* DAILY UTILITY

PERSONAL ADS TRANSLATED

ENERGETIC = So manic it will set your teeth on edge
LIVE LIFE TO THE FULLEST = Multiple substance abuser
SEXY = Preens like a crow strutting in the gutter
EASY-GOING = Prescription meds a-plenty; will share
NICE GUY = Won’t criticize your appearance in public
SINCERE = Lying sack of shit
PASSIONATE = Will ejaculate in under 30 seconds guaranteed
RESPECTFUL = Utterly dull
WITTY = Loves to hear self talk
FLEXIBLE = Has no life of their own
SELF-ASSURED/CONFIDENT = Boorish and overbearing
ANIMAL-LOVER = Has no human friends
CLEVER = Knows how to suck a subway token out of a slot
JOYFUL/HAPPY = Inane
LOYAL = Desperate
AFFECTIONATE = Slavish
KIND-HEARTED = Dopey
FAMILY-ORIENTED = Kowtows to Mom
INTERESTING/INTRIGUING = Wanted in at least two states
TALENTED = Frustrated intellectual who will only talk about self
INVIGORATING/INSPIRING = Manic
POLITE = Introverted along every point of the scale
ANIMATED = Extra-manic
ACTIVE = Loves his truck more than people
OUTGOING = Drunk every night
SINGLE = Probably married
FUN GUY = Lager lout
OUTDOOR PERSON = Clumsy as an ox
GREAT SENSE OF HUMOR = Loves the Three Stooges; hopes you do too
I DON’T KNOW WHY I’M DOING THIS = Definitely married
SHY = Likes to set fires
WORKING OUT = Narcissist
MOVIES =Smuggles own candy into theater
SPORTS = Will ignore you 9 months of the year
Sophisticated = I’m so ugly I haven’t had a date in ten years
Loving = You will need a restraining order to get rid of me
Generous = I deal drugs
Cute = Age 40 and still have “baby fat”
Reliable = Will always arrive in time for dinner
My colleagues describe me as handsome = I’m their boss
Great legs = Face like Lena the Hyena
Petite = I am 4’6″
Curvaceous = Morbidly obese
Hourglass figure =Will fuck for crack
Affectionate = Will cling to you for dear life
Likes to cuddle = Forget about oral sex
Interested in a committed relationship =Unemployed & about to be evicted
Sensitive = Irritable and neurotic
Great cook = It takes two people to hug me
Romantic = Indifferent to making a living
Caring = Dumb as a bag of rocks
Monogamous = Will fuck for food
Down to earth = Rude, crude and socially unacceptable
Looking for best friend = Don’t expect much sex
Educated = Laughably pretentious
Gentleman = Male chauvinist extraordinaire
Well hung = Bring tweezers
Great in bed = I have the I.Q. of a ceiling fan
I’d love to satisfy you = Haven’t had a woman in three years
Sexually insatiable = Will fuck rocks, moss, lichen
Animal = Will bully you and your friends for favors
Great lover = Monosyllabic grunts constitute conversation
Uninhibited = A stone-cold certified triple-X freak
Romantic = psycho
Rubenesque = fat
I’ve been told I’m attractive = ugly
Great personality = ugly+fat
Old-fashioned = frigid and/or born again christian
Easygoing = desperate
adventurous = slut
will try anything once = slut
open minded = slut
cute recent college grad = middle aged fat dude from Duluth
I enjoy the finer things in life = You will pay.
Professional = my job description has a title.
Friendship and possible LTR = Dear God why am I so lonely?*

7 CARTOON

WALT DISNEY

ALICE AND THE DOG CATCHER (1924)

SOUNDTRACK: GID TANNER & THE SKILLET LICKERS

YA GOTTA QUIT QUICKIN’ MY DOG AROUND

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJ3rXbFn8qE

8*PRESCRIPTION

ANALYSIS OF FLAUBERT’S DICTIONARY OF RECEIVED IDEAS

https://web.archive.org/web/20120308154041/http://www.robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bouvard/ideas.html

ALSO SEE:GREASY KID STUFF AND MIDDLE MANAGEMENT
The clean smart look of 1957. God help you if you work in one of the service industries and your boss is a Brylcreem man. He will constantly be asking himself why he employs such a young slob. Service work in general is a huge drag. You’re at the beck and call of crackpot customers who pull the same sort of trick I used to pull on my mother when I was ten years old: “I just want to see something.” On the other side of the equation, there’s the sales personnel who are expected by management to be always smiling and happy and thrilled to serve the customer–some are–but they are rare. Of course, when you’re middle management, you are expected to always be on call, have to work long hours for no added pay, have to deal with policies and regulations, have to deal with disgruntled employees, and are the court of last resort for dealing with irate customers. You can’t win! It’s my theory that adult children of alcoholics are drawn to middle management–specifically, the type known as “the hero child.” To quote Richard Wright: “Shorty, how can you let them kick you for a quarter?” Shorty: “My ass is tough, and quarters is scarce.”

9* RUMOR PATROL

HOAX: WOMAN ARRESTED FOR SHITTING ON BOSS’ DESK

https://thevalleyreport.com/2016/04/25/woman-arrested-for-defecating-on-boss-desk-after-winning-the-lottery/?fbclid=IwAR1dAIoCvMdvt5Ycq_8ysyRipN9BuYyy3GwRP5QPtdkmHFMhWqLVNAhkdaM
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/woman-quits-winning-lottery/ https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/the-desk-pooper-is-not-real-yall

10*LAGNIAPPE

PAUL MCCARTNEY
GOODBYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyet4WxAmpM

MARY HOPKIN
GOODBYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZqtwwo_0qc

THE MONKEES
THE PORPOISE SONG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKmPmZoKeP0

STEAM
NA NA HEY HEY GOODBYE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaG2Acg8n60

11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF OTHER MEDIA
THE GREATEST MENACE TO THE WRITER IS THE READER

https://lithub.com/the-greatest-menace-to-the-writer-is-the-reader-and-other-advice-from-shirley-jackson/

12* CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE

READ THE STORY THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT!!!

FACT: The UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT has teamed up with the CIA, jealous Homosexual men, and Scientologists to produce a horde of mind-controlled zombies (J.D. Salinger, Charlie Manson, Frank Sinatra) who have infiltrated the entertainment industry at all levels.

FACT: The jealous Homosexual men in high government have been pushing a Trilateralist gay agenda since 1977, which has resulted in such innovation as AIDS, women smoking cigars, and rainbow suspenders, previously only worn by jugglers, circus clowns and Robin Williams. (That the latter actually wrote forty-two of the plays of William Shakespeare has been debated, but not confirmed.)

FACT: Furthermore, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow was based on a true story, although the real truth is that the Government perfected time-travel in 1776 and has been using it since that time to alter world events in scattered locales such as Waterloo, Sarajevo, and Ford’s Theatre. Is it a coincidence, then, that Henry FORD widely publicized the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his bid for a second Presidential term? (Calvin Coolidge was, of course, a mere cut-out. This has been confirmed by none other than President Boxcar Willie, who, with Bob Hope, maintained a stable of willing young male and female prostitutes as sex slaves. One of these nightwalkers, known as the Argentine Firecracker (from a country where Hitler is alive and well) deliberately undermined presidential candidate Wilbur Mills, formerly the Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, who retired in 1977, the year of Carter’s Trilateralist accession and, not coincidentally, the beginning of the jealous Homosexual man conspiracy to undermine the nuclear family.)

Are we beginning to see a pattern here?

FACT: Masons, jealous Homosexual men, and robots killed John F. Kennedy because he wanted to abrogate the power of the Jeckyll Island cabal known as the Federal Reserve Bank. (It is surely not a coincidence that, in 1886, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, in a cocaine-fueled frenzy, his tale of Dr. JECKYLL and Mr. HYDE–Henry HYDE, as we all know, was Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, and for many years represented Illinois, home of Chicago syndicate boss Sam “Momo” Giancana, whose girlfriend was none other than the lusty Judith Exner Campbell, who serviced the randy sex-and-drug addict John F. Kennedy. NOW DO YOU GET IT??

Wait–it gets better. FACT: Sam “Momo” Giancana was a member of Chicago’s notorious “Forty-two Gang”. Have we seen this number somewhere before? It is the sum of the first 6 positive even numbers!

Furthermore, in Egyptian mythology, there are 42 questions asked of persons making their journey through Death. 42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabbalistic tradition. There are 42 generations in the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the Genealogy of Jesus. It is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5). The ASCII code 42 is for the asterisk symbol, being a wildcard for everything. Furthermore, it is a scientifically proven FACT that in 79 years Mars orbits the Sun almost exactly 42 times! Note that it was in 1979 that 42 American hostages were kidnapped and held hostages by students in Iran. Coincidence? Or something FAR MORE DEADLY?? EVEN MORE SIGNIFICANTLY, 42 is the angle rounded to whole degrees for which a rainbow appears! That’s right, jealous Homosexual man–a RAINBOW!!

NOW DO YOU GET IT???

CONCLUSION: Homosexual men, Jew-haters, robots, and time-travelers have been monkeying around with OUR destiny since The Declaration of Independence.

A lot of people are saying it, so it must be so. It may not all be true–but it’s TRUE ENOUGH.

ISN’T IT TIME WE PUT A HALT TO THIS MADNESS???

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dc/14/3a/dc143a5b2ecf74fc237aa6b6aec77ff9.jpg
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The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures

2019-04-12T12:00:51.000Z

Nowadays we are used to having hundreds of gigabytes of storage capacity in our computers. This was pure science fiction only a few decades ago. For example, the first hard disk drive to have gigabyte capacity was as big as a refrigerator, and that was in 1980. Not so long ago!

Pingdom stores a lot of monitoring data every single day, and considering how much we take today’s storage capacity for granted, it’s interesting to look back and put things into perspective. Here is a look back at some interesting storage devices from the early computer era.

The Selectron tube

The Selectron tube had a capacity of 256 to 4096 bits (32 to 512 bytes). The 4096-bit Selectron was 10 inches long and 3 inches wide. Originally developed in 1946, the memory storage device proved expensive and suffered from production problems, so it never became a success.

Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.

Punch cards

Early computers often used punch cards for input both of programs and data. Punch cards were in common use until the mid-1970s. It should be noted that the use of punch cards predates computers. They were used as early as 1725 in the textile industry (for controlling mechanized textile looms).

Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)

Above left: Punch card reader. Above right: Punch card writer.

Punched tape

Same as with punch cards, punched tape was originally pioneered by the textile industry for use with mechanized looms. For computers, punch tape could be used for data input but also as a medium to output data. Each row on the tape represented one character.

Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).

Magnetic drum memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.

Above left: The magnetic Drum Memory of the UNIVAC computer. Above right: A 16-inch-long drum from the IBM 650 computer. It had 40 tracks, 10 kB of storage space, and spun at 12,500 revolutions per minute.

The hard disk drive

The first hard disk drive was the IBM Model 350 Disk File that came with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. It had 50 24-inch discs with a total storage capacity of 5 million characters (just under 5 MB).

Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was the IBM 3380 in 1980 (it could store 2.52 GB). It was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (250 kg), and the price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400.

Above left: A 250 MB hard disk drive from 1979. Above right: The IBM 3380 from 1980, the first gigabyte-capacity hard disk drive.

A hard disk drive called SyQuest was targeted for personal computers, and for many years had no relevant competition in terms of transferring large desktop publisher documents. The first SyQuest SQ306RD introduced in 1983 had endless (at the time) 5MB hard drive for most of the available data types, also audio and video. In 1986, a 44 MB SQ555 and SQ400 were available on the market.

Above: Removable hard disk SyQuest 44 MB.

The Laserdisc

We mention it here mainly because it was the precursor to the CD-ROM and other optical storage solutions. It was mainly used for movies. The first commercially available laserdisc system was available on the market late in 1978 (then called Laser Videodisc and the more funkily branded DiscoVision) and were 11.81 inches (30 cm) in diameter. The discs could have up to 60 minutes of audio/video on each side. The first laserdiscs had entirely analog content. The basic technology behind laserdiscs was invented all the way back in 1958.

Above left: A Laserdisc next to a regular DVD. Above right: Another Laserdisc.

The floppy disc

The diskette, or floppy disk (named so because they were flexible), was invented by IBM and in common use from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s. The first floppy disks were 8 inches, and later in came 5.25 and 3.5-inch formats. The first floppy disk, introduced in 1971, had a capacity of 79.7 kB, and was read-only. A read-write version came a year later.

Above left: An 8-inch floppy and floppy drive next to a regular 3.5-inch floppy disk. Above right: The convenience of easily removable storage media.

Magnetic tape

Magnetic tape was first used for data storage in 1951. The tape device was called UNISERVO and was the main I/O device on the UNIVAC I computer. The effective transfer rate for the UNISERVO was about 7,200 characters per second. The tapes were metal and 1200 feet long (365 meters) and therefore very heavy.

Above left: The row of tape drives for the UNIVAC I computer. Above right: The IBM 3410 Magnetic Tape Subsystem, introduced in 1971.

And of course, we can’t mention magnetic tape without also mentioning the standard compact cassette, which was a popular way of data storage for personal computers in the late 70s and 80s. Typical data rates for compact cassettes were 2,000 bit/s. You could store about 660 kB per side on a 90-minute tape.

Above left: The standard compact cassette. Above right: The Commodore Datassette is sure to bring up fond memories for people who grew up in the 80s.

DECtape

DECtape was a magnetic data storage introduced in 1963 used mainly with Digital Equipment Corporation computers. It was designed to be durable and reliable enough to act as a computer’s operating system main storage medium. The tape was 0.75 in (19 mm) wide and was accommodating 6 data tracks which were paired with non-adjacent tracks. It could have been written/read in any direction, and it was almost error-proof. The DECtape was used on Digital Equipment’s PDP-series of mainframes and minicomputers, and each tape could store 184K 12-bit PDP-8 words or 144K 18-bit words.

Above left: Dual DECtape unit for a DEC PDP-11. Above right: DECtape removable magnetic media.

There are so many interesting pictures from “the good old days” when you look around on the web. These were some of the best we could find, and we hope you liked them.

If you are interested in the history of computer science, you should check our Gallery of Early Computers and old tech reviews from BYTE Magazine.

Picture sources:

The Selectron. The punch card. The punch card reader and writer. Punched tape 1 and 2. UNIVAC magnetic drum. IBM 650 computer magnetic drum. The IBM Model 350 Disk File. 250 MB hard drisk drive from 1979. The IBM 3380. Laserdisc vs DVD. Held Laserdisc. 8-inch floppy drive. 8-inch floppy in use. UNISERVO and UNIVAC I. The IBM 3410. The compact cassette. The Datassette, SyQuest, TU56DECtape, DECtape I and II.

And as always, Wikipedia was a great source for checking out the actual facts.

EDIT: Removed the comment about the Commodore Datassette sound, since it was a factual error: Removed this: “(For those who weren’t there, you could hear the sound of the data being read as a high-pitched, screechy sound while you were loading your programs.)” We also went with some of the comment suggestions and decided to add paragraphs regarding the SyQuest and DECtape.

WANT MORE?

Can’t get enough of nostalgia? Don’t miss: The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

The post The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures appeared first on Pingdom Royal.

The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures

2019-04-12T12:00:51.000Z

The Selectron tube

Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.

Punch cards

Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)

Above left: Punch card reader. Above right: Punch card writer.

Punched tape

Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).

Magnetic drum memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.

The hard disk drive

Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

Above left: A 250 MB hard disk drive from 1979. Above right: The IBM 3380 from 1980, the first gigabyte-capacity hard disk drive.

Above: Removable hard disk SyQuest 44 MB.

The Laserdisc

Above left: A Laserdisc next to a regular DVD. Above right: Another Laserdisc.

The floppy disc

Above left: An 8-inch floppy and floppy drive next to a regular 3.5-inch floppy disk. Above right: The convenience of easily removable storage media.

Magnetic tape

Above left: The row of tape drives for the UNIVAC I computer. Above right: The IBM 3410 Magnetic Tape Subsystem, introduced in 1971.

Above left: The standard compact cassette. Above right: The Commodore Datassette is sure to bring up fond memories for people who grew up in the 80s.

DECtape

Above left: Dual DECtape unit for a DEC PDP-11. Above right: DECtape removable magnetic media.

There are so many interesting pictures from “the good old days” when you look around on the web. These were some of the best we could find, and we hope you liked them.

If you are interested in the history of computer science, you should check our Gallery of Early Computers and old tech reviews from BYTE Magazine.

Picture sources:

And as always, Wikipedia was a great source for checking out the actual facts.

WANT MORE?

Can’t get enough of nostalgia? Don’t miss: The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

The post The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures appeared first on Pingdom Royal.

The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures

2019-04-12T12:00:51.000Z

The Selectron tube

Above: The 1024-bit Selectron.

Punch cards

Above: Card from a Fortran program: Z(1) = Y + W(1)

Above left: Punch card reader. Above right: Punch card writer.

Punched tape

Above: 8-level punch tape (8 holes per row).

Magnetic drum memory

Invented all the way back in 1932 (in Austria), it was widely used in the 1950s and 60s as the main working memory of computers. In the mid-1950s, magnetic drum memory had a capacity of around 10 kB.

The hard disk drive

Above: IBM Model 350, the first-ever hard disk drive.

Above left: A 250 MB hard disk drive from 1979. Above right: The IBM 3380 from 1980, the first gigabyte-capacity hard disk drive.

Above: Removable hard disk SyQuest 44 MB.

The Laserdisc

Above left: A Laserdisc next to a regular DVD. Above right: Another Laserdisc.

The floppy disc

Above left: An 8-inch floppy and floppy drive next to a regular 3.5-inch floppy disk. Above right: The convenience of easily removable storage media.

Magnetic tape

Above left: The row of tape drives for the UNIVAC I computer. Above right: The IBM 3410 Magnetic Tape Subsystem, introduced in 1971.

Above left: The standard compact cassette. Above right: The Commodore Datassette is sure to bring up fond memories for people who grew up in the 80s.

DECtape

Above left: Dual DECtape unit for a DEC PDP-11. Above right: DECtape removable magnetic media.

There are so many interesting pictures from “the good old days” when you look around on the web. These were some of the best we could find, and we hope you liked them.

If you are interested in the history of computer science, you should check our Gallery of Early Computers and old tech reviews from BYTE Magazine.

Picture sources:

And as always, Wikipedia was a great source for checking out the actual facts.

WANT MORE?

Can’t get enough of nostalgia? Don’t miss: The history of PC hardware, in pictures.

The post The History of Computer Data Storage, in Pictures appeared first on Pingdom Royal.

Introduction to Omeka – Lesson Plan

2013-11-12T23:34:38.000Z

I’ve taught “Introduction to Omeka” many times at various THATCamps, but I’ve never done more than work from an outline. Today, however, I wrote it all down, and I am posting it for your edification here. The text is below, and here is a PDF: Introduction_to_Omeka_Lesson_Plan. I’ve marked the PDF with a CC-BY license, and all the content on this site is similarly marked, so feel free to share and adapt. You may also be interested in the lesson plan for the workshop Teaching with Omeka that I co-taught with Jeff McClurken at THATCamp Pedagogy back in 2011.

One reason I’ve never written this up before is that I’ve taught the workshop so many times (perhaps a dozen?) that I felt I knew it backward and forward with just a sketchy outline; I’ve rarely had the chance to teach anything so many times, and I must say that I’ve appreciated the chance to practice and improve. It has also taught me to be grateful for the “how to teach technology” training I had at the University of Virginia back when I was a “Teaching with Technology Support Partner” — the model they gave us, which I still remember and use, was this: Motivate, Define, Demonstrate, Practice. First, you have to convince people that they want to learn this software and explain how it’s different from other software, and show them exciting examples of things accomplished with the software. Then you should define particular terms that might be unfamiliar, then demonstrate key features or tasks, then have people practice using the software while you circulate and help them. It’s never as neat as that, of course — in particular, it’s usually best to help define a term by demonstrating its use in context — but I do try to follow that rough model when I’m teaching technology.

In any case, here you go.

Introduction to Omeka: Lesson Plan

by Amanda French – amandafrench.net

Preparation
1. Go to omeka.net and click the big “Sign up!” button. Sign up for the free Basic plan. When you submit the form, you will be emailed an activation link and a username and password. If you don’t get the email, check your spam folder. Feel free to explore Omeka on your own while I take you through it.
Introduction – What is Omeka? (10 minutes)
1. Omeka is a simple, free web publishing system built by and for scholars that is used by hundreds of archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and individual researchers and teachers to create searchable online databases and scholarly online interpretations of their digital collections. If you have a digital collection of primary sources that you want to publish online in a scholarly way, you’ll want to consider Omeka.
2. “Omeka” (pronounced oh-MEH-ka) is a Swahili word meaning “to display or lay out wares” – swahili_english.enacademic.com/11461/omeka
3. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media began building Omeka in 2006; they wanted to abstract the technologies they were using repeatedly to build historical websites, all of which required setting up a searchable database that was integrated with an online exhibit.
4. One of the first sites to use a proto-version of what would become Omeka was the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, an archive of personal stories and digital records related to the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita: hurricanearchive.org/. Another was the April 16th Archive at april16archive.org/, a commemoration of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting tragedy. Omeka 1.0 was officially released for public use in June 2009.
5. The free, open source, downloadable version of Omeka is available at omeka.org. This version of Omeka is self-hosted software that can be installed on a web hosting server (not on your personal computer, at least not unless you’re willing to install a virtual server on your PC). Librarians or educational technologists at your institution may be happy to install and maintain Omeka for you on an organizational web hosting server; if you’d like to buy commercial web hosting for about $100 per year and teach yourself to use it, you can check out the Omeka team’s hosting suggestions.
6. Because some organizations and individuals couldn’t or didn’t want to run their own server or buy commercial server space, RRCHNM began developing a hosted version of Omeka that requires much less technical knowledge, infrastructure, and labor. The hosted version of Omeka, which was beta-launched in October 2010, is available at omeka.net.
7. When considering whether to use the self-hosted version of Omeka or the hosted version of Omeka, you will want to keep in mind the useful lesson from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Concomitantly, of course, “with less responsibility comes less power.” In other words, when you download Omeka from omeka.org, you can customize it as much as you want and install it as many times as you like, but creating and supporting those Omeka sites may take a good bit of knowledge and time. When you use the hosted version of Omeka at omeka.net, it’s much easier, but you will run up against certain limits of space and functionality. You might also think of self-hosting Omeka as like owning a house, whereas using the hosted version of Omeka is like renting an apartment. Moving from one to the other is perfectly feasible, but it’s about the same level of hassle as moving house (it depends on how much stuff you have, for one thing!). See bitly.com/compareomekas for more on this issue.
8. Omeka is a nonprofit project; its funding comes from federal funding agencies and from private foundations who support education: IMLS, Mellon, Sloan, and Kress. The fees for the premium plans at omeka.net are used to buy storage space for your files from Amazon Web Services.
Basic Omeka features and definitions (15 minutes)
1. Here’s a typical Omeka site: the City of Boston archive – cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/ (linked to from the main City of Boston Archives at www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/). I’ll define some key terms and features while taking you through this site.
2. Items – An “item” is the basic unit of an Omeka site. It might be a photograph with a single attached image file, a three-page letter with three attached image files (one for each page), or a record with no attached files (such as a “person” record). Omeka can handle all the major digital file types for documents, images, audio, and video; audio and video files display as an embedded Quicktime player so that the user can listen or watch. Example: See this site’s 77 items at cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items
  1. Metadata – Data about data; information about an item. Bibliographic metadata is the title, author, publisher, date and so on of a publication, for instance. Omeka encourages you to describe every item with lots of metadata, which is part of what makes it a scholarly system. Example: cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/show/77
  2. Dublin Core – Dublin Core is a metadata standard used by libraries and archives for digital items that consists of 15 basic fields that can be used to describe any digital object, no matter what it is. Such basic fields include Creator, Subject, Description, Date, Rights, and so on. “Dublin” is Dublin Ohio, not Dublin Ireland; “core” is the same sense as “core curriculum” — the name comes from the 1995 meeting in Dublin, OH where librarians and computer scientists first formulated this shared standard set of essential information needed to describe digital objects. Omeka does also allow adding additional standard metadata fields and creating custom metadata fields, but this may make it more difficult to transfer your data to and from Omeka and other systems, since these systems need a shared vocabulary to “talk” to one another. But the fact that Omeka is built on Dublin Core means that your data is likelier to last longer, because it can be moved to other systems later. There are prompts built in to Omeka that will help you understand what information to put in every Dublin Core field, but you can also consult the Dublin Core User Guide section on Creating Metadata (version 2).
  3. Advanced Search – Every Omeka site comes by default with a basic keyword search and an Advanced Search screen. Any information entered in an item’s Dublin Core metadata fields will be findable when a user searches for it, and the Advanced Search lets a user narrow by particular metadata fields. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/advanced-search and search for Date → contains → 1942 to find items from the year 1942.
  4. Item Type – By default Omeka offers 12 types of items, including “Document,” “Still Image,” “Sound,” “Moving Image,” “Person,” and more. You can also define custom item types, perhaps something like “Coin” or “Poem” or “Quilt,” and you can define custom sets of metadata fields to go with those item types. For instance, if you define the item type “Poem,” you might define a metadata field such as “Rhyme Scheme” where you can enter that information (such as A’bA” abA’ abA” abA’ abA” abA’A” for a villanelle). Be aware, though, that creating custom item types and metadata fields may make it more difficult to exchange data between your Omeka archive and other existing systems. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/advanced-search and Search by Type = Document to find 7 documents in the archive (as opposed to photos, for instance).
  5. Tags – Tags allow you to link items together with terms of your choosing. When any two items have the same tag, the tag automatically turns into a link. Omeka sites allow you to browse items by tag. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/browse/tag/ and click “Hyde Park” to see items tagged with that term.
  6. Featured Items – Omeka sites by default have a space on the home page for recently added items and for “featured” items that are particularly interesting. You can mark items as “featured” when you add them (or afterward). Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net to see the featured item. (This site currently has only one featured item, so it never changes; sites with more than one featured item will load a new one randomly when the site is refreshed.)
3. Collections – Collections are ways of organizing items, rather like file folders on your computer, or like collections in archives such as “Papers of William Faulkner, 1929-1965” in the Special Collections of the University of Virginia. Collections provide a way to organize your items into separate, logically coherent groups. Items do not have to be in collections, but once an item is in a collection, it can’t be in any other collection. You can make as many links as you like between items in different collections, though, with tags and exhibits. Example: cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/collections
4. Exhibits – Exhibits are where the scholarly rubber hits the Internet road, as it were. While a March 2010 survey of Omeka users found that most Omeka sites surveyed consisted of just a searchable “collections catalog” of their items, the next highest use of Omeka was for its capacity to build and publish “narrative exhibits.” Once you have built an Omeka archive with enough items, you can then use exhibits to interpret those items for the online public. Think of exhibits in a museum: a large museum may own 100,000 items, but at any one time only perhaps 1,000 of them are on display, and a single exhibit may have only 25 or so items. These items have been carefully chosen and arranged by curators, who also often write interpretive text for panels mounted on the wall and for the exhibit’s official catalog. You can also think of Omeka exhibits as multimedia essays created using the items in your archive. Many websites about scholarly or quasi-scholarly topics often decontextualize the images and documents they display, and the reader who wants to know where a particular image came from may be out of luck. This never happens with Omeka exhibits, because any item displayed in the exhibit can be clicked on, and the reader will be taken to the item record with its full complement of Dublin Core metadata. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/exhibits and click on the exhibit about Jesse Harding Pomeroy, arrested in 1874, Massachusetts’s youngest killer (only 14 years old!). Go to the exhibit page at cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/pomeroy/pomeroy and click on any image, and you’ll be taken back to the item record for that file.
Selected Omeka sites (15 minutes)
1. Steepletop Library: The Books of Edna St. Vincent Millay – steepletoplibrary.org (my site; I’m using Omeka as a book catalog)
2. Montgomery County Memory – montgomerymuseum.omeka.net (a site used to publish items brought in to the Montgomery County, VA public library and digitized as part of an NEH Common Heritage project)
Harlem Congress on Racial Equality – harlemcore.com/omeka (site built by a student in my Creating Digital History course in the NYU Archives and Public History MA program in 2009)
Carnet géologiques de Phillippe Glangeaud – bibliotheque.clermont-universite.fr/glangeaud/ (uses Geolocation plugin)
Inventing the Map: Frances Henshaw’s Book of Penmanship – henshaw.scholarslab.org (uses Neatline)
Europeana – exhibitions.europeana.eu/
1. Art Nouveau – exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/art-nouveau-en
DPLA – dp.la/exhibitions
1. Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States – dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/spirits
Robert & Monnoyer: French Botanical Artists of the 17th Century – robertandmonnoyer.omeka.net/ (hosted site, no exhibits, but pretty pictures)
The Appalachian Dulcimer Archive – dulcimerarchive.omeka.net/ (hosted site, no exhibits, but a Simple Page of “Histories” that substitutes for the Exhibit; has audio files of dulcimer playing; uses Geolocation plugin so must be at least Silver plan)
See info.omeka.net/showcase/ for another selection of hosted Omeka sites
See omeka.org/codex/View_Sites_Powered_by_Omeka for another selection of self-hosted Omeka sites

Working with Omeka Demos – amandafrench.omeka.net (10 minutes)

Themes – Themes control the look and feel of your Omeka site: the color, the font, the layout. There are (currently) four themes included with the free basic plan for hosted Omeka sites; these themes can be configured to some extent with custom banner images and different colors and so on. There are more than a dozen themes for self-hosted Omeka sites at omeka.org/add-ons/themes/. You can also design your own theme for Omeka, as many of the larger and more advanced Omeka sites do. The NYU Archives and Public History program got a curricular grant of about $4000 to hire a designer for the Greenwich Village History site, which students in Creating Digital History contribute to, for instance. Demonstration: Change the theme and refresh amandafrench.omeka.net to see the difference.
Plugins – Like themes, plugins are separate “add-ons” to Omeka, but whereas themes change the look and feel of an Omeka site, plugins change the functionality of an Omeka site — they change what it can do. There are (currently) 10 plugins packaged with the free Basic plan on Omeka.net, but there are more than 50 very cool plugins for the self-hosted version of Omeka listed at omeka.org/plugins that do everything from enabling anyone on the web to contribute items to your archive (with the Contribution plugin) to tweeting out an announcement whenever a new item is added (with the Tweetster for Omeka plugin). Some of these plugins are developed by the Omeka team at RRCHNM, but a lot of them are developed by people who are customizing Omeka for their own purposes and contributing their code to the larger community. Demonstration: Activate / deactivate the Documents Viewer plugin and go to amandafrench.omeka.net/items/show/18 and refresh to see the difference.
Users – You can add as many users as you like to an Omeka site, even when you only have a free Basic plan on omeka.net. You can add users in four roles:
1. Super – can do everything
2. Admin – can do everything with items and exhibits etc., but can’t access Settings
3. Contributor – can add items and create exhibits, but can’t publish them, and can’t modify items added by other Contributors
4. Researcher – can only see items, but can see all items, including private items that aren’t published to the web. Note that all items you add to Omeka are private by default; you must deliberately check a checkbox in order to publish an item to the web. This is useful when you want to include an item in your archive but don’t want to publish it to the web, as for instance when the copyright status of an item is unclear. Users who are logged in can see both private and public items in Omeka, so the “Researcher” role allows you to let selected individuals see but not edit your items.
Demonstration: Add an item

Exercises (10-20 minutes)

Sign up for the free Basic plan on omeka.net if you haven’t already; when you submit the form at www.omeka.net/signup you will be emailed an activation link and a username and password. If you don’t get the email, check your spam folder.
Log in to your hosted Omeka site on omeka.net and create a site.
Add an item.
Create a collection.
Begin creating an exhibit.
Or try out any of the other features you like. Raise your hand if you have a question and I’ll come around to help.

Resources

Omeka.net help documentation – info.omeka.net/
Omeka.org help documentation – omeka.org/codex/Documentation
Omeka.org Forums – omeka.org/forums/
The Dublin Core Usage Guide – www.dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/

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Introduction to Omeka – Lesson Plan

2013-11-12T23:34:38.000Z

In any case, here you go.

Introduction to Omeka: Lesson Plan

by Amanda French – amandafrench.net

Preparation
1. Go to omeka.net and click the big “Sign up!” button. Sign up for the free Basic plan. When you submit the form, you will be emailed an activation link and a username and password. If you don’t get the email, check your spam folder. Feel free to explore Omeka on your own while I take you through it.
Introduction – What is Omeka? (10 minutes)
1. Omeka is a simple, free web publishing system built by and for scholars that is used by hundreds of archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and individual researchers and teachers to create searchable online databases and scholarly online interpretations of their digital collections. If you have a digital collection of primary sources that you want to publish online in a scholarly way, you’ll want to consider Omeka.
2. “Omeka” (pronounced oh-MEH-ka) is a Swahili word meaning “to display or lay out wares” – swahili_english.enacademic.com/11461/omeka
3. The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media began building Omeka in 2006; they wanted to abstract the technologies they were using repeatedly to build historical websites, all of which required setting up a searchable database that was integrated with an online exhibit.
4. One of the first sites to use a proto-version of what would become Omeka was the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, an archive of personal stories and digital records related to the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita: hurricanearchive.org/. Another was the April 16th Archive at april16archive.org/, a commemoration of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting tragedy. Omeka 1.0 was officially released for public use in June 2009.
5. The free, open source, downloadable version of Omeka is available at omeka.org. This version of Omeka is self-hosted software that can be installed on a web hosting server (not on your personal computer, at least not unless you’re willing to install a virtual server on your PC). Librarians or educational technologists at your institution may be happy to install and maintain Omeka for you on an organizational web hosting server; if you’d like to buy commercial web hosting for about $100 per year and teach yourself to use it, you can check out the Omeka team’s hosting suggestions.
6. Because some organizations and individuals couldn’t or didn’t want to run their own server or buy commercial server space, RRCHNM began developing a hosted version of Omeka that requires much less technical knowledge, infrastructure, and labor. The hosted version of Omeka, which was beta-launched in October 2010, is available at omeka.net.
7. When considering whether to use the self-hosted version of Omeka or the hosted version of Omeka, you will want to keep in mind the useful lesson from Spiderman: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Concomitantly, of course, “with less responsibility comes less power.” In other words, when you download Omeka from omeka.org, you can customize it as much as you want and install it as many times as you like, but creating and supporting those Omeka sites may take a good bit of knowledge and time. When you use the hosted version of Omeka at omeka.net, it’s much easier, but you will run up against certain limits of space and functionality. You might also think of self-hosting Omeka as like owning a house, whereas using the hosted version of Omeka is like renting an apartment. Moving from one to the other is perfectly feasible, but it’s about the same level of hassle as moving house (it depends on how much stuff you have, for one thing!). See bitly.com/compareomekas for more on this issue.
8. Omeka is a nonprofit project; its funding comes from federal funding agencies and from private foundations who support education: IMLS, Mellon, Sloan, and Kress. The fees for the premium plans at omeka.net are used to buy storage space for your files from Amazon Web Services.
Basic Omeka features and definitions (15 minutes)
1. Here’s a typical Omeka site: the City of Boston archive – cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/ (linked to from the main City of Boston Archives at www.cityofboston.gov/archivesandrecords/). I’ll define some key terms and features while taking you through this site.
2. Items – An “item” is the basic unit of an Omeka site. It might be a photograph with a single attached image file, a three-page letter with three attached image files (one for each page), or a record with no attached files (such as a “person” record). Omeka can handle all the major digital file types for documents, images, audio, and video; audio and video files display as an embedded Quicktime player so that the user can listen or watch. Example: See this site’s 77 items at cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items
  1. Metadata – Data about data; information about an item. Bibliographic metadata is the title, author, publisher, date and so on of a publication, for instance. Omeka encourages you to describe every item with lots of metadata, which is part of what makes it a scholarly system. Example: cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/show/77
  2. Dublin Core – Dublin Core is a metadata standard used by libraries and archives for digital items that consists of 15 basic fields that can be used to describe any digital object, no matter what it is. Such basic fields include Creator, Subject, Description, Date, Rights, and so on. “Dublin” is Dublin Ohio, not Dublin Ireland; “core” is the same sense as “core curriculum” — the name comes from the 1995 meeting in Dublin, OH where librarians and computer scientists first formulated this shared standard set of essential information needed to describe digital objects. Omeka does also allow adding additional standard metadata fields and creating custom metadata fields, but this may make it more difficult to transfer your data to and from Omeka and other systems, since these systems need a shared vocabulary to “talk” to one another. But the fact that Omeka is built on Dublin Core means that your data is likelier to last longer, because it can be moved to other systems later. There are prompts built in to Omeka that will help you understand what information to put in every Dublin Core field, but you can also consult the Dublin Core User Guide section on Creating Metadata (version 2).
  3. Advanced Search – Every Omeka site comes by default with a basic keyword search and an Advanced Search screen. Any information entered in an item’s Dublin Core metadata fields will be findable when a user searches for it, and the Advanced Search lets a user narrow by particular metadata fields. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/advanced-search and search for Date → contains → 1942 to find items from the year 1942.
  4. Item Type – By default Omeka offers 12 types of items, including “Document,” “Still Image,” “Sound,” “Moving Image,” “Person,” and more. You can also define custom item types, perhaps something like “Coin” or “Poem” or “Quilt,” and you can define custom sets of metadata fields to go with those item types. For instance, if you define the item type “Poem,” you might define a metadata field such as “Rhyme Scheme” where you can enter that information (such as A’bA” abA’ abA” abA’ abA” abA’A” for a villanelle). Be aware, though, that creating custom item types and metadata fields may make it more difficult to exchange data between your Omeka archive and other existing systems. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/advanced-search and Search by Type = Document to find 7 documents in the archive (as opposed to photos, for instance).
  5. Tags – Tags allow you to link items together with terms of your choosing. When any two items have the same tag, the tag automatically turns into a link. Omeka sites allow you to browse items by tag. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/items/browse/tag/ and click “Hyde Park” to see items tagged with that term.
  6. Featured Items – Omeka sites by default have a space on the home page for recently added items and for “featured” items that are particularly interesting. You can mark items as “featured” when you add them (or afterward). Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net to see the featured item. (This site currently has only one featured item, so it never changes; sites with more than one featured item will load a new one randomly when the site is refreshed.)
3. Collections – Collections are ways of organizing items, rather like file folders on your computer, or like collections in archives such as “Papers of William Faulkner, 1929-1965” in the Special Collections of the University of Virginia. Collections provide a way to organize your items into separate, logically coherent groups. Items do not have to be in collections, but once an item is in a collection, it can’t be in any other collection. You can make as many links as you like between items in different collections, though, with tags and exhibits. Example: cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/collections
4. Exhibits – Exhibits are where the scholarly rubber hits the Internet road, as it were. While a March 2010 survey of Omeka users found that most Omeka sites surveyed consisted of just a searchable “collections catalog” of their items, the next highest use of Omeka was for its capacity to build and publish “narrative exhibits.” Once you have built an Omeka archive with enough items, you can then use exhibits to interpret those items for the online public. Think of exhibits in a museum: a large museum may own 100,000 items, but at any one time only perhaps 1,000 of them are on display, and a single exhibit may have only 25 or so items. These items have been carefully chosen and arranged by curators, who also often write interpretive text for panels mounted on the wall and for the exhibit’s official catalog. You can also think of Omeka exhibits as multimedia essays created using the items in your archive. Many websites about scholarly or quasi-scholarly topics often decontextualize the images and documents they display, and the reader who wants to know where a particular image came from may be out of luck. This never happens with Omeka exhibits, because any item displayed in the exhibit can be clicked on, and the reader will be taken to the item record with its full complement of Dublin Core metadata. Example: Go to cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/exhibits and click on the exhibit about Jesse Harding Pomeroy, arrested in 1874, Massachusetts’s youngest killer (only 14 years old!). Go to the exhibit page at cityofbostonarchives.omeka.net/exhibits/show/pomeroy/pomeroy and click on any image, and you’ll be taken back to the item record for that file.
Selected Omeka sites (15 minutes)
1. Steepletop Library: The Books of Edna St. Vincent Millay – steepletoplibrary.org (my site; I’m using Omeka as a book catalog)
2. Harlem Congress on Racial Equality – harlemcore.com/exhibit (site built by a student in my Creating Digital History course in the NYU Archives and Public History MA program in 2009)
3. Greenwich Village History – gvh.aphdigital.org (current site used by Creating Digital History students; NYU partnered with the Greenwich Village Historical Society and other NY institutions for some materials )
4. Host to the World: The Waldorf Astoria Digital Archive – hosttotheworld.com (terrific content)
5. Carnet géologiques de Phillippe Glangeaud – bibliotheque.clermont-universite.fr/glangeaud/ (uses Geolocation plugin)
6. Inventing the Map: Frances Henshaw’s Book of Penmanship – henshaw.scholarslab.org (uses Neatline)
7. Europeana – exhibitions.europeana.eu/
  1. Art Nouveau – exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/art-nouveau-en
8. DPLA – dp.la/exhibitions
  1. Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States – dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/spirits
9. Robert & Monnoyer: French Botanical Artists of the 17th Century – robertandmonnoyer.omeka.net/ (hosted site, no exhibits, but pretty pictures)
10. The Appalachian Dulcimer Archive – dulcimerarchive.omeka.net/ (hosted site, no exhibits, but a Simple Page of “Histories” that substitutes for the Exhibit; has audio files of dulcimer playing; uses Geolocation plugin so must be at least Silver plan)
11. See info.omeka.net/showcase/ for another selection of hosted Omeka sites
12. See omeka.org/codex/View_Sites_Powered_by_Omeka for another selection of self-hosted Omeka sites
Working with Omeka Demos – amandafrench.omeka.net (10 minutes)
1. Themes – Themes control the look and feel of your Omeka site: the color, the font, the layout. There are (currently) four themes included with the free basic plan for hosted Omeka sites; these themes can be configured to some extent with custom banner images and different colors and so on. There are more than a dozen themes for self-hosted Omeka sites at omeka.org/add-ons/themes/. You can also design your own theme for Omeka, as many of the larger and more advanced Omeka sites do. The NYU Archives and Public History program got a curricular grant of about $4000 to hire a designer for the Greenwich Village History site, which students in Creating Digital History contribute to, for instance. Demonstration: Change the theme and refresh amandafrench.omeka.net to see the difference.
2. Plugins – Like themes, plugins are separate “add-ons” to Omeka, but whereas themes change the look and feel of an Omeka site, plugins change the functionality of an Omeka site — they change what it can do. There are (currently) 10 plugins packaged with the free Basic plan on Omeka.net, but there are more than 50 very cool plugins for the self-hosted version of Omeka listed at omeka.org/plugins that do everything from enabling anyone on the web to contribute items to your archive (with the Contribution plugin) to tweeting out an announcement whenever a new item is added (with the Tweetster for Omeka plugin). Some of these plugins are developed by the Omeka team at RRCHNM, but a lot of them are developed by people who are customizing Omeka for their own purposes and contributing their code to the larger community. Demonstration: Activate / deactivate the Documents Viewer plugin and go to amandafrench.omeka.net/items/show/18 and refresh to see the difference.
3. Users – You can add as many users as you like to an Omeka site, even when you only have a free Basic plan on omeka.net. You can add users in four roles:
  1. Super – can do everything
  2. Admin – can do everything with items and exhibits etc., but can’t access Settings
  3. Contributor – can add items and create exhibits, but can’t publish them, and can’t modify items added by other Contributors
  4. Researcher – can only see items, but can see all items, including private items that aren’t published to the web. Note that all items you add to Omeka are private by default; you must deliberately check a checkbox in order to publish an item to the web. This is useful when you want to include an item in your archive but don’t want to publish it to the web, as for instance when the copyright status of an item is unclear. Users who are logged in can see both private and public items in Omeka, so the “Researcher” role allows you to let selected individuals see but not edit your items.
4. Demonstration: Add an item
Exercises (10-20 minutes)
1. Sign up for the free Basic plan on omeka.net if you haven’t already; when you submit the form at www.omeka.net/signup you will be emailed an activation link and a username and password. If you don’t get the email, check your spam folder.
2. Log in to your hosted Omeka site on omeka.net and create a site.
3. Add an item.
4. Create a collection.
5. Begin creating an exhibit.
6. Or try out any of the other features you like. Raise your hand if you have a question and I’ll come around to help.
Resources
1. Omeka.net help documentation – info.omeka.net/
2. Omeka.org help documentation – omeka.org/codex/Documentation
3. Omeka.org Forums – omeka.org/forums/
4. The Dublin Core Usage Guide – www.dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/

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