Omeka Plugin Presentation: Contribution Plugin Greg Ferguson LIS 654 November 8, 2011

The Plugin The Contribution plugin allows users to submit items to be included in the digital library. Submissions must be approved by the site administrator before they are published to the public site. The plugin comes configured to accept images and stories, but it can be adjusted to receive other types of material as well.

reCAPTCHA After installing the plugin, Omeka's documentation suggests using reCAPTCHA ( to prevent your digital library from being attacked by spambots.

reCAPTCHA A free service run by Google Once installed, it requires the user to decipher two distorted words before submitting their contribution One word from each pair is drawn from printed material Google is digitizing using Optical Character Recognition The OCR program sends words it's unsure of to reCAPTCHA for verification by web users

reCAPTCHA After registering your domain, you will receive a set of codes (called "keys") that will allow your site to communicate with reCAPTCHA. Omeka is already set up to work with reCAPTCHA, so once you have the keys all you have to do is enter them into your dashboard to complete the installation.

Configuring the Contributions plugin

From the Contributions dashboard, administrators can adjust the following: The item types users can contribute (the defaults are still Images and stories) The information users will be prompted to include about each item they contribute

Configuring the Contributions plugin

Administrators can also do the following from the dashboard: Enable confirmations and notifications for new contributions Set terms of service Set default collections and item types for incoming contributions View contributors' information and submissions

Contributing an item The process is simple... the user clicks on "Contribute an Item" on the homepage.

Contributing an item The user chooses an item type, locates a file to upload from their local drive, and fills in the metadata...

Contributing an item... then provides their information, completes the reCAPTCHA form and agrees to the terms and conditions.

Contributing an item

Publishing a contributed item Once an item is submitted, an administrator must publish it to the site. Unfortunately the plugin does not provide a way to see only pending contributions. Instead, the administrator must go either to the Items tab or the Contribution tab to view, edit, and publish new contributions.

Publishing a contributed item From the Items tab, the administrator can browse all items and identify recently added items. Clicking "Edit" allows the administrator to alter and publish new items.

Publishing a contributed item Here the administrator can edit or add metadata or tags, assign a collection, etc. Clicking the "Public" check box before saving the changes will publish the item to the public site.

Publishing a contributed item Alternately, the administrator can also view and publish items from a particular contributor by selecting that contributor's profile under the Contribution tab. Clicking on "View" under the Contributed Items heading will display that contributor's items in the Items tab.