Exhibit.so – more than meets the eye?

Linnea Eberhart

Check out my exhibit by clicking the image above.

As an admitted museum systems noob, using exhibit.so proved to be an exercise in remaining open minded and pivoting as needed. I had initially assumed that using the IIIF manifest for the Omeka S collection I had previously created would make this assignment relatively straightforward, but that was not the case. The process required just to obtain the IIIF manifests from Omeka S was far more complicated than it needed to be given that you have to type in a specific URL and add the item number each time – I’m not sure why there isn’t just a button to that page or, even better, a link to the actual IIIF manifest in one of the tabs of information already in Omeka S. Long story short though, it took a bit longer than anticipated which just made it that more frustrating when I couldn’t get the images to load on exhibit.so even after I had all the IIIF manifests! My first attempt at creating an exhibit was during class so I thought the system may have just been overwhelmed by the number of other users, but I tried on other days and other times and was never able to get the Omeka S images to load. The black screen and loading icon seemed to be taunting me!

So like any good information professional, I turned to Google to try and figure out what was going wrong. While I ultimately wasn’t able to fix the issue with the Omeka S images, I did find other IIIF manifests that did work – so I changed gears and decided to use one of those instead. Which really is so bizarre because my Omeka S IIIF manifest contained one image whereas the Library of Congress manifest I chose had 370 images! 

And then came the time to actually try out exhibit.so which took some additional poking around to make work. Some steps were relatively intuitive while others took some trial and error, including:

• It wasn’t enough to import an IIIF manifest, you also had to click “Add to Exhibit” and yet it didn’t seem like you could add multiple IIIF manifests to a single exhibit. 
• In order to delete items from the exhibit, I had to go back to “add item” which was obviously not the first place I looked for this feature.
• It took me a couple of attempts before I realized I could change the template and title on the same page without going back and starting over – that’s on me though! Definitely felt a little silly once I put that together.
• I didn’t realize that images wouldn’t appear in the presentation unless you added more information. So my first couple “previews” were just a black screen with the title and it wasn’t until I started adding story steps that I was able to see what the exhibit was actually supposed to look like. 
• I put together that each new story step was connected to whichever image I happened to have open when the story was created purely by chance.

Once I finally got going, it started coming to me easier but there were still a couple things that proved irritating like the fact that there was no option to create font or background color presets so if you changed either of those options on a story slide you had to do it every time. And it frustrated me to no end that it looked like you should be able to drag/drop to rearrange the story slides but that wasn’t a feature and I never did figure out a way to reorganize them – instead I had to delete the one that was out of order and create a new slide for it. Not that a big deal for three or four slides but definitely would be a pain for a larger exhibit! And good luck if you didn’t save a copy of the editable link because then you’d have to start all over as there didn’t appear to be an option to create an account or otherwise save your project. 

All that being said, I can see the value of creating exhibits like this in some circumstances as it makes it easier to connect information about the item, its history, and other details to a visual which creates a more engaging learning experience. The scroll template in particular would be an advantage as it imitates the same scrolling utility that makes social media so consumable. Personally, I’d much rather scroll through information than click through a bunch of pages so this format would definitely be more engaging for me. Using exhibit.so would also allow library and museum professionals to share more in-depth information on their collections which would benefit both the user and also the museum in keeping records. It certainly allows for more information than the traditional 3” x 5” museum label.

At the same time, exhibit.so seems to serve much the same function as Powerpoint or Prezi in providing a visual story-telling aid and both of those systems are much more developed and user-friendly. The main difference would be the IIIF integration which, based on my own difficulties, may be more of a hindrance than a benefit especially since the only benefit seems to be that the images are automatically uploaded into the system…if you’re lucky and exhibit.so likes your IIIF manifest that is. And even if we disregard the technical challenges of using the system, the time, effort, and inside knowledge required to make each of these exhibits doesn’t seem feasible on a larger scale – though talk about job security if it was! Especially if exhibit.so ever closes up shop and your museum has to start all over again with a new system.

Thinking big picture then, it may be that exhibit.so is best used as an individual educational aid rather than a replacement for, or even a supplement to, physical museum exhibits.