I feel a little intimidated at first, thinking about the fact that I’ll be learning how to do this job while doing the job. I think about looking incompetent in front of the other Vivellos and the students who come in for help. I think about getting stuck and not knowing where to go from that point. However, after some more reflection, I think about how the other Fellows are around for support – for both me the students who come in with questions, and I feel a little lighter. While I’m learning how to do my job on the fly, there are people around me who have done and are doing the same thing. That brings me comfort, because it means that it’s just about continuing to improve and find new ways to get things done.
Learning to use Omeka was easier than I thought it would be. The instructions in the training were very clear so I feel like I’m getting the hang of it. I feel like I can help someone with the basics right now, which is probably okay (and to be expected, given that I just learned how to use it). I’m not a Computer Science major nor do I have an interest in web developing (for now), so I think that it would be really cool – and possibly even a learning experience for me – if someone with that background came in for support, given how Omeka has these code shortcuts you can use. I find the organisation of the website to be interesting because it seems like you can fit a lot of information on it with all the different ways you can group the items. The hardest part is getting all the jargon sorted out in my head. I just realised that Simple Pages are different from Pages in an Exhibit. My question has to do with batch uploading using .csv files – how does it all work on the backend? I want to explore that in more depth.