Culture and Heritage Informatics CI3130 Project Report

Third of March, Bulgarian National Festival http://thirdofmarchfestival.omeka.net/

Dimitar Kehayov K1014260

Executive Summary Description of the client organisation and its activity "Third of March" is a national festival which celebrates the freedom and independence of Bulgaria after 500 years of vassalage, this festival occurs once every year. This day marks the date which the Treaty of San Stefano ended the Russo-Turkish war in 1877 [1] and flagged the way for liberation of Bulgaria, this is the day everything changed for Bulgaria in result it had established itself as a country on the world map once again. The clients of this project will be people which are interested in learning about the festival or just want to know what the festival is about. People that come from Bulgaria or have an association with Bulgaria are the ones most likely to show the highest amount of interest in this project, they may also have the interest to comment on the exhibition. The festival is celebrated by the whole country, it is also a holiday for the whole country allowing them to spend it with their families and do nothing but eat, drink, and dance all day. Brief Synopsis of the project undertaken I intend to create an online exhibition which will consist of images, videos and general information about the festival. I will also be looking at the heritage of the festival including any Bulgarian history related to the festival. This will be information such as; before the vassalage, during the vassalage, after the freedom and independence and how the country has progressed since by achieving its status in the European Union. The reason why I have chosen to do this project is because I, myself come from Bulgaria and it will be interesting to learn more about this festival as Im working on the project. Once the project is complete, it will help others like me to learn more about their country and what the festival is about. The exhibition however isnt only aimed at people who come from Bulgaria but also anyone with an interest for the topic. There will be a feature in the exhibition allowing users to comment on any of the images or videos with any questions which they may have. I will be collecting some images, videos and information online from various websites. Furthermore I will be collecting some images of attractions such as liberty monuments and memorials from family members; I will also collect some information via interviews.

Theoretical or Intellectual issues addressed in the project One of the issues which I may face during this project is copyright issues. The reason for this is because I will be acquiring some of the information from a number of various website. However, as I am going to be using the information for a knowledge based/educational exhibition, this makes it less likely to be an issue, if there is any issues or problems then I will have to ask the owner of the websites permission. Another issue which I may face is with the accessibility of the website. As the project aim is to create an exhibition it will be very important that the website has functional accessibility features such as; allowing the user to enlarge images, increase font size and to make sure that the navigation around the website function correctly. Technology Used The software which I will be using for this project is Omega. The reason why I have chosen this software is because it is perfectly suitable for online exhibitions thanks to all of the different tools available to the user. Omeka provides the user with simple functions such as being able to upload images, describe the images using the metadata form using information about the image such as the source where the image came from. Omeka also provides the user with the option to create an exhibition using the already uploaded images from any previously created collections. As there arent any tools to upload any videos onto Omeka, I will create an item with the video hyperlink and metadata with the information about the video.

Analysis The purpose of this project is to create a website which will educate people about the Bulgarian National Festival, Third of March. The project is aimed at people who are interested in learning about this famous national festival which represents the liberation day for Bulgarians after being under vassalage for five hundred years. The website looks widely at Bulgaria as a country altogether of how it has changed after the events which Third of March represents. The exhibit is aimed to tell a story like a history lesson with an exhibition of images and text. This will be done by adding information about uploaded images in the description metadata part, each image will tell its own part of the story as the user progresses through the images they will learn everything they need to know about; the festival, Bulgaria under the vassalage and Bulgaria at the present. The exhibit will be split into three collections; the festival, vassalage, and the present collection. The festival collection will include images of families celebrating the festival including information about the festival and what symbols represent the festival. The vassalage collection will include images from when Bulgaria was under Vassalage, including information and statistics of what had happened to Bulgaria and its people during this period of time. The final collection will include images and videos of some of the locations from the vassalage collection but at present time, every image will contain information about how Bulgaria has improved as a country since the peace treaty had been signed on liberation day. I may come across some challenges while creating the exhibit, Omeka doesnt have tools to allow me to upload videos but instead I have decided to use their hyperlink tool. I will use it to link the URL of the video and include information about the video in the metadata. Another challenge which I could face may be that due to having a restricted profile on Omeka I wont have access to tools which allow users to upload photos. Instead I have decided to create a page called Create your own collection which gives the user instructions to email me if they would like to become a contributor, once they have emailed me I will be able to send them an invitation from the My Account menu which will allow them to log in with only contributor permission. This means they wont be able to edit content uploaded by other users.

Aims and Objectives The aims and objectives for the project are; Create 3 different collections Upload at least 15 different items Create an exhibit The exhibit should tell a story Provide meta data for each image Each image must have a description

This is the MOSCOW Prioritisation for the project; Must have MOSCOW Prioritisation Information about festival, vassalage and the present Images Videos Over 15 items uploaded Contact Us page About page Contributions by users Any copyright images Irrelevant information

Should have Could have Wont have

Technical Walkthrough During this technical walkthrough I will be describing every single page from the website, this will include all collections and exhibits. I will also be describing the tools and Omeka plug-ins used to create the website. These are screenshots from some of the pages of the website; Home Page

The screenshot above shows the homepage of the website, the home page shows any items, collections and exhibits which I have chosen to publish on the home page. The homepage also tells the user what the website is about, if you look at the featured items you can see this. Browse Items Page

This is the items page of the website, here you can browse any items uploaded, and this will include all images and videos.

Browse Collections Page

This page shows the collections created, I have split them into three different collections. Browse Exhibits Page

This is the Exhibit page; I have split the website into three exhibits. Each exhibit tells its own story about the national festival; The Festival exhibit is about the festival itself, the vassalage exhibit is about what happened during the vassalage, and the present looks at how Bulgaria has changed since Liberation day.

Create your own Collection Page (Contribute)

This page instructs the user on how they can make their own contributions to the website by creating their own collection.

The screenshots above shows how I will be inviting users to contribute to the website.

Contact Us Page

This is the contact us page, on this page viewers can leave any comments they would like. Once they press the Send Message button it will be sent directly to my email.

Tools and Plug-ins used to create the website: Omeka Omeka is a free open source content management system used to store digital online collections and exhibits. Omeka allows users to upload their own images in the form of items; these items can be then used to create collections, the collections can then be used to create exhibits. Omeka also has a range of plug-ins which can be used to add more functions to the site; I will be listing some of the plug-ins which I will be using below. Simple Pages This plug-in will allow me to create simple pages which consist of text. Using this plug-in I will be able to create the Create your own collection page and a about page which will include information about the website itself. Collections and Exhibits The collection and exhibit plug-ins are the main reason why I have chosen to use Omeka. The collections plug-in allows the user to create a collection using images uploaded to items, once collections have been created an exhibit can be created using the exhibit plug-in and the collections.

Dublin Core metadata Dublin Core metadata are a set of terms which are used to describe media files on Omeka, it is not a mandatory requirement that every single metadata is complete for each image but the more of them filled out the better because it provides more information about the image from different aspects. There are fifteen metadata elements; Title, creator, subject, description, publisher, contributor, date, type, format, identifier, source, language, relation, coverage and right. The screenshots below show some of the main Mata Data used.

Tagging I will be adding tags to each image uploaded; the reason for this is if a user uses the search tool to search for an image then the tag will lead the user to the image they are looking for. The screenshot below shows a search, and the results that came up according to the tags.

Contribution Omeka doesnt have the tool to enable users to register and contribute to the website; instead I have discovered another tool which allows the admin to send an invitation to users which would like to be contributors, once the invitation has been accepted the user will be able to contribute to the website. (Refer to Create your own Collection screenshots above.)

Theoretical/Technical issues During this project I will be facing many theoretical and technical issues; I will be listing some of the issues and also will be explaining how these issues have been solved. One of the first issues which I believed I was going to deal with is copyright issues. The reason for this is because I am creating an exhibition which consists of a lot of images, so I thought I was likely to face a lot of copyright issues. However, I was able to find a lot of knowledge based websites which didnt have any copyright issues. I also managed to find articles and blogs which either had no problem with people using their images or a statement stating that any content on the website can be downloaded and published again, I will be looking more into this in the resource part of the report where I will provide references of where all content was acquired from. Another issue which I believed I was likely to encounter is accessibility for the website, I have already spoken of this in brief. I believe accessibility is very important when it comes to building a website; I wanted to make sure that each image can be enlarged upon clicking on the image, an option to enlarge the font size of the website and to make sure the website and the exhibition can be successfully viewed from more than one type of browser. The image enlargement accessibility didnt turn out to be an issue because of the image enlargement option for all images in Omeka which were uploaded as still image in items. However I wasnt able to include a tool which would enlarge the text, this is because Omeka doesnt have such tools and it only allows using plug-ins available from Omeka itself, there isnt the option for any PHP therefore I couldnt insert such function. Another issue which I faced was I couldnt create a Contact Us form, the reason for this was because the standard user account doesnt offer the plug in for the contact us form, the way to solve this was to pay for the full membership account which provides more plugins and tools which helped make the site even better.

Project Review The aim of the project was to create an exhibition website, which is made to tell a story by looking at images, videos and read the information provided for each one. The exhibit was supposed to tell the whole history of Bulgaria under vassalage including information about the festival, and how Bulgaria has changed since the Liberation Day. During the course of the project I faced some challenges and issues, the challenges and issues can be found in Analysis and theoretical/intellectual issues parts of the report. Even though I may have had problems solving these issues they provide to be a useful learning experience of how to use Omeka. Overall, I was happy with the Omeka tools and all of its plugins, the final product of the collections and exhibitions were all successful therefore all Aims and Objectives have been achieved.

Resources In this section of the report I will provide references for all images used, this information can be found in the Meta Data under each image. Images + Information
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. http://www.brilltravel.com/about-bulgaria/history http://www.brilltravel.com/about-bulgaria/language-and-culture http://www.brilltravel.com/about-bulgaria/cultural-traditions-and-events http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batak_massacre http://pc-freak.net/blog/tag/batak/ Blog permitted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasil_Levski http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=105840 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martenitsa http://bnr.bg/sites/en/Lifestyle/HistoryAndReligion/Pages/100thanniversaryofBalkanWarsth ebeginning.aspx 11. http://bnr.bg/sites/en/Lifestyle/HistoryAndReligion/Pages/The18771878WarofLiberationinBulgarianhistoryandart.aspx 12. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shipka_pass_%28engraving%29.jpg

Video
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ZikG_-MJc

All of the content for the website is from articles, blogs, and knowledge based websites. I have made sure that each one of these website does not have any copyright laws or is either copyright but with statement stating that the information can be used freely.

Exhibition available at: http://thirdofmarchfestival.omeka.net/