Glossary¶
This page provides brief explanations of the terminology used in this documentation and has links to pages where you can learn more. Words in bold appear elsewhere in this glossary.
- Administrator
- An administrator is a person who maintains their organization's Digital Archive site. The Omeka documentation refers to an administrator as super user.
- Archivist
- An archivist is a staff member or volunteer who maintain a Digital Archive collection.
- Attachment
- An attachment is a digital image file, or a PDF file, that is associated with an item such that whenever you view the item's metadata, you also see the image or PDF.
- Archival asset
- As archival asset is the original digital file from which the web-sized images that are displayed by the Digital Archive are derived. The TIFF file produced by a scanner is an archival asset.
- AWS
- AWS is an acronym for Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms.
- Collection
- In this documentation, a collection refers to the set of items (images, documents, maps, etc.) in an organization's Digital Archive database.
- Common term
- A common term is term that comes from the Common Vocabulary.
- Common Vocabulary
- The Common Vocabulary is a set of vocabulary terms organized as a hierarchy.
- Database
- A database is a structured set of data, stored and accessed electronically from a computer system. The Digital Archive uses MySQL as its database.
- Developer
- A developer is a software professional who maintains the Digital Archive software for one or more sites.
- Elasticsearch
- Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine that makes fast searching possible.
- Element (Omeka)
- An Omeka element is a container for a single metadata value such as title, description, type, or subject. In this documentation, element is synonymous with field.
- Facets
- Facets are the Subject, Type, Place, and Date sections in the Refine Your Search panel. They allow users to easily narrow down search results by clicking on vocabulary terms in the panel.
- Field
-
A field refers to one of an item's metadata elements. Examples of fields are Title, Description, Type, and Subject. Field names appear in this documentation in Small Caps. In this documentation, field is synonymous with element.
A field is also what you type into when editing an item's metadata.
- Grid View
- Grid View is a way to view search results as a grid of thumbnails.
- Guest user
- A guest user is a user who can see all of the data in a collection (public and private), but cannot add, edit, or remove an item.
- Hierarchy
- A hierarchy is a tiered grouping of related terms that are each unique, but have something in common.
An example of a hierarchy is the term
Nature, Animals, Birds. Birds are grouped under animals, and animals are grouped under nature. - Index (Elasticsearch)
- An Elasticsearch index is like a table in a database, but is structured in a way that makes it possible to search huge volumes of data and get back results instantly.
- Index View
- Index View is a way to view search results as an alphabetized list of unique values indexed by a specific field.
- Item
- An item represents one thing in a Digital Archive collection and all its associated metadata. Examples of items are photographs, documents, maps, publications, and physical objects.
- Item page
- An item page is a Digital Archive webpage where you view an item's metadata and any of its image or PDF file attachments.
- Item set
- An item set is a two or more items that an archivist has chosen to group together into a set.
- Keyword
- A keyword is a significant word in an item's Title, Description or other field that provides specific information about the item and helps users find items when doing a keyword search.
- Left admin menu
- The left admin menu appears on the left side of every admin page when you are logged in to the Digital Archive as either an archivist or administrator. Admin pages have a beige background.
- Lightbox
- The lightbox is a popup window that appears to display a larger image when you click on an item's thumbnail in search results.
- Metadata
- Metadata is information about information. For example, the information in a photograph is the image itself which is a picture of something. The metadata for a photograph is the information about the image such as the subjects in the picture or the name of the photographer.
- MySQL
- MySQL is the relational database used by Omeka to store the items in a collection.
- Nomenclature 4.0
- Nomenclature is a structured list of object terms organized in a classification system for indexing and cataloging collections of human-made objects. The latest version is 4.0.
- Non-public item
- A non-public item is an item that only a logged in user can see. In contrast, any user can see a public item.
- Omeka
- Omeka is a web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.The Digital Archive software use Omeka as its foundation.
- Organization
- In this documentation, organization refers to a museum, library, or historical society that is using the Digital Archive to make its collection available online.
- Private field
- A private field is a field that only a logged in user can see.
- Pseudo field
- A pseudo field is one that can be used for searching, or that appears in search results, but is not actually a field. The pseudo fields are tags, score and contributor.
- Public field
- A public field is a field that anyone can see in a public item. Only a logged in user can see a private field.
- Public item
- A public item is an item that anyone can see. Only a logged in user can see a non-public item.
- Plugin
- A plugin is a software component that adds features to an existing computer program. The Digital Archive plugins add features to Omeka.
- Reference item
- A Reference Item is an Omeka item that relates other items in the collection to each other
- Relationship
- A relationship is an association between two items in a collection that indicates how the two items are related to each other.
- S3
- S3 stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service.
- Selector
- A selector is one of the dropdown lists that are grouped together in the selector bar at the top of search results pages. The selectors are Search, View, Layout, Index By, Sort By, Per Page, and Items. Not all selectors appear together at the same time.
- Search results
- Search results are the list of items that you see when you search a Digital Archive collection.
- Site
- A site refers to the Digital Archive software installation and database for a single organization.
- Site term
- A site term is a term that does not come from the Common Vocabulary. It is specific to an organization and is found in that organization's site vocabulary.
- Site vocabulary
- A site vocabulary is a set of terms that are specific to one organization's Digital Archive site.
- Subject
- Subject is a field to used to further classify a Type. Learn about Type and Subject.
- Super user (Omeka)
- An Omeka super user is someone with an Omeka login that allows them to do anything and everything in Omeka. In this documentation, a super user is referred to as an administrator.
- Table View
- Table View is a way to view search results in tabular form.
- Tags
- Tags are words that describe an attribute of an item. The Omeka tags feature is available in the Digital Archive, but is not described in this documentation. The Digital Archive's support for relationships, item sets, and hierarchical vocabularies make tags less important than in applications that don't have those features.
- Term
- A term is a combination of words in a vocabulary that concisely describe or classify something. For example,
Image, Photograph, Photographic Print, Cyanotypeis a single term that describe a photograph that was printed using the cyanotype printing process. - Type
- Type is a field used to indicate what an item is. Learn about Type and Subject.
- Upload
- Upload refers to the process of copying a file from a personal computer to the Digital Archive which resides on a server. You upload a file that you want to attach to an item.
- User
- A user is anyone that uses the Digital Archive. A user that is logged in like an archivist or administrator can do more than a user who is not logged in.
- Zoomable image
- A zoomable image is a very high resolution image that you can zoom in on to see more detail.
- Visualization
- A visualization (short for data visualization) is a graphical depiction of an item's relationships with other items.
- Vocabulary
- A vocabulary is a controlled list of terms that archivists use when cataloging items in their collection.
- Vocabulary Editor
- The Vocabulary Editor lets you work with the Common Vocabulary to define the set of common terms and site-specific terms that archivists will use when working with items in your collection.