CERES: Exhibit Toolkit works with Northeastern University's Digital Repository Service (DRS) to help you to build curated exhibit pages about your work that preserves your research over time. By storing your videos, images, and audio files in the DRS, this toolkit assures that metadata associated with the exhibits is available to both projects and their end users. CERES websites use a customized WordPress theme with several specialized plugins and shortcodes that pulls files from the DRS and allow you to make dynamic and customizable exhibits to showcase your research material. By making it easy to display objects that are secure within the DRS, we hope to encourage projects that are built to last.

How It Works

The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a Fedora/Hydra repository that publishes items and their metadata through an API. The Northeastern University Libraries created a specialized WordPress plugin that uses the API to pull digital objects from the DRS into WordPress. This creates dynamic displays where, as item metadata is updated or new items are added to the DRS, that new information is automatically pushed to the WordPress site.

Northeastern University Libraries also created a series of shortcodes, which are customizable chunks of PHP code within WordPress. These shortcodes provide a friendly, clickable interface that lets you not only select items from the DRS to display, but also lets you arrange items in many different ways. You can embed pictures within a long text narrative, as well as create more visually stimulating exhibits such as a rotating carousel, map, timeline, or Pinterest-style gallery.

These functions are pulled together through a customized WordPress theme that offers end-users many typical WordPress design options while allowing DSG staff the standardization we need to ensure functionality in the future. To see this framework in action, see our Projects Showcase.

Here we've included an in-depth guide on the features and functionalities CERES offers. If you'd like to read more, download the guide.

About the Digital Repository Service

The Digital Repository Service (https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/) is a secure repository system designed to store and share the scholarly work from Northeastern University’s colleges, departments, faculty, and staff. The DRS was developed by Northeastern University Libraries as a tool for the University community to protect the valuable information and data that has been created as part of the University’s research and instructional mission. Because the DRS is built using Fedora, an open source repository system with a user-friendly API, objects stored in the DRS can be accessed and displayed using customized web-publishing tools, like Omeka, Drupal, or WordPress.

An example of this framework in practice is the Terp Talks video series portal from Northeastern's National Interpreter Education Center. The site itself is built using WordPress, but the video content and metadata come from the DRS. For more information about the DRS, visit http://dsg.neu.edu/resources/drs.

If you don't think CERES: Exhibit Toolkit is right for your project, but you're still interested in securely storing project files in the repository, contact Library-Repository-Team@neu.edu.

This documentation was written by

Param Ajmera, DSG Research Assistant
Kaley Bachelder, DSG Research Assistant
Abbie Levesque, DSG Coordinator
Gregory Palermo, DSG Research Assistant
Alicia Svenson, DSG Coordinator

CERES Exhibit Toolkit

This project was created on a customized WordPress instance using the CERES Exhibit Toolkit. These tools, as well as archival, hosting, and support systems, are provided by the Northeastern University Library Digital Scholarship group. The DSG specializes in the Digital Humanities and helps faculty, staff, and students in the Northeastern community showcase their projects to the public.