Our Platform & Process

Once the decision was made to abandon the development of a physical museum, the Rowing History Project Team focused on developing a platform which would enable a rowing club, or a private collector, to catalog their collection and display it to the public.  During this time, we sought advice from several Philadelphia institutions, and we reviewed many of the existing web sites that share rowing history with the public.

The Beginning: The Vesper Challenge

Early on in our exploration of web-based museum exhibit platforms, our Team began working with Vesper Boat Club to review the state of their extensive collection, and to advise them on a way forward for preservation, storage and display.  This was a major effort involving almost one thousand items.  Much of the Vesper collection had to be moved off-site for safe storage; ultimately, much of the collection was moved to the warehouse of Boathouse Sports in North Philadelphia, which provided a space for cataloging the collection, combining like-objects for efficient storage, labelling and photography.  About one-third of the Vesper collection was cataloged at the Vesper boathouse, and about two-thirds was cataloged off-site.

Vesper hired Margery Sly, a very well-known Philadelphia archivist, to review the collection, and to design a technique for recording the inventory on an Excel worksheet, which could ultimately be used for uploading to a web-based platform.  This worksheet contained the basic fields which would be considered by a professional archivist to be foundational to a formal archive.  The Team had not yet selected what the web-based platform would be, but the fields in Margery’s Vesper inventory sheets could be mapped and uploaded to almost any platform considered suitable for a museum collection.

Things were moving very quickly during the Vesper inventory process: we were cataloging and photographing hundreds of items, all the while thinking about how this effort could be achieved by other rowing clubs.

Foundational Principles

While Margery was working with us on the Vesper cataloging, we asked her to assist us in software selection of the platform that would ultimately host the entire Rowing History Project.  She provided us with key decision criteria, and she introduced us to several institutions that could share their experiences with us.  Eventually, we decided upon several “foundational principles” that would inform our platform selection.

First: “Volunteers, not Experts.” We knew that a Club could hire a professional archivist to catalog their collection, but this would be far too expensive.  Because of our experience with Vesper, we knew that non-professional volunteers could perform this work, as long as they had some guidance, and detailed training materials.  Some archiving platforms are specifically designed to be used by professional archivists, and they appear very complex to non-professionals.  These platforms were eliminated from our pool of finalists.

We also made every effort possible to use common rowing terminology throughout the entire process, so that everything is non-technical and easily recognizable to a rowing enthusiast.

Second: Cost Effectiveness.  We wanted our platform to require absolutely no specialized infrastructure for a Club or collector, other than a laptop, a camera, and Wi-Fi.  It would also ideally require no specialized expertise in any software, other than basic spreadsheet handling.

Third: Archiving Standards.  We wanted our cataloging technique to adhere to nationally recognized standards.  This means that a Rowing History Project member, after creating their catalog, owns a valuable record that can serve as the foundation of a formal organizational archive.  This principle eliminated platform solutions based on social media apps; the Rowing History Project is instead based on professional archiving standards.

The Solution: Omeka-S Plus Customized “Front End” (The Platform)

After several weeks of in-depth consideration of various platform options, we made a tentative decision to use Omeka-S as our “Back End” application for storing the inventory and imagery, and for displaying it on the web.  Omeka-S is an open source solution used by thousands of museums, libraries and historical societies worldwide for displaying collections on the web. 

RHP engaged Walt Rice to secure and install a new instance of Omeka-S on a server he managed, and configure it for the Rowing History Project.  This system has one overall home page for the Rowing History Project, which is known as the union site, and individual collection sites for each Member.

A Proof of Concept was initiated in order to determine ease of use, scale and extensibility.  In August, 2024, data and images that had been recorded for the Vesper Collection were used as input for the platform to demonstrate the presentation and navigation that the end user will see.   

The “Proof of Concept” phase was successfully completed.  But, we still had much work to do: we needed a “front end” solution for non-professionals to document their inventories using archival standards.

We engaged the Conservation Center for Art and Historical Artifacts, in Philadelphia, to architect the Rowing History Project “front end.” which was built upon Google Sheets, using Google shared drives for collaboration.

(For a complete description of the front end, please see the Resources section for training guides and videos.)

How Does a Collection become part of the Rowing History Project?

When a Club or collector indicates that they want their collection to be cataloged and displayed on the Rowing History Project:

  1. RHP will meet with your team of volunteers to discuss a plan for inventorying your collection. We provide a Collection Folder in shared Google Drive for all your files, which will include inventory spreadsheets, imagery, jpeg’s, PDF’s, etc.  We also give you access to training material including a review of our tips for photographing a collection.
  2. A standard numbering scheme is assigned to your collection and your team will begin  entering objects into the Google Sheets. Our archivist can follow your progress in real time, help with answering questions and advise you along the way.  Once inventory is complete, our archivist will also complete a Quality Assurance.
  3. Each collection has its own collection home page.  To create this, you supply us with your organizational information and a brief text description of your collection.  The collection description is not meant to duplicate the history that is already on your web site; instead it is a guide for the viewer to understand the collection contents in the context of your historical records.  
  4. We then create your collection home page, and load the contents of your inventory sheets to Omeka-S. Loading your collection to Omeka-S can be done in phases.  It is important to bear in mind that your inventory, on your Google Sheets, is your “master” document.  Omeka is synchronized from the Google Sheets; any subsequent adds, changes or deletes on the sheets will be reflected in Omeka.
  5. You are now ready to create “Stories” that contain imagery from the collection. These are “digital exhibits”; you can think of them as multimedia newspaper articles.