I was curious to see how Omeka sites have illustrated population growth and other changes over time. I was hoping to find something similar to the Pastmapper site about Greenwich Village, which takes a street in Greenwich village and incorporates census and building data. It is not an Omeka site, but I very much like the way it works. I’d love to do something similar for a block in Morningside Heights.
I looked for Omeka sites that incorporate census data. In Digital Amherst, Peoples of Amherst gives a very general description of antebellum population growth and links to the 1790 census list from Rootsweb. The site does not have a time-line, but instead uses tags for decades and centuries. The Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanatorium also includes images of the 1930 manuscript census listing patients and staff residing at the sanatorium.
Then I decided to look for sites that use maps to show change over time. Neatline is a suite of Omeka plugins designed by the Scholars Lab that could help us show how Morningside Heights changed from 1850 to 1920 by allowing us to combine maps, images, and text, and display them dynamically. Other Neatline features include a time line and the ability to easily upload data in CSV format. It would be great to upload a CSV file of information on the buildings in neighborhood, including name, height, architect, builder, owner, number of apartments, etc.
I also looked at Viewshare, which is not an Omeka plug in, but which can embedded in an Omeka site. The website has a great view using the Cason Monk-Metcalf data set, a collection of funeral home records.
