About This Site

Jack Williams & His Collection

Jack Williams (1925-2011) was an expert in Colonial History and Antique Weapons. In the early-sixties he opened the Gun Shop and Museum of Weapons in America's oldest city Saint Augustine Florida. Williams is well known for discovering the lost site of Fort Mosa (Mose), the first free-black settlement in what was to become the United States. The site saw significant action during the War of Jenkins' Ear in 1740 and the Patriot War in 1812. Williams was honored for his discovery with the de Aviles Award in 2003.

The Jack Williams collection of Antique Firearms, Edged Weapons and Rare Artifacts is unique. It contains examples of both the elaborately decorated weapons of the rich and everyday weapons of the Spanish, English and French Colonial periods. The collection also contains many items like this eighteenth century Mold Blown Bottle found by Williams near Fort Mosa.

Digital Collection Management

This is an experimental site exploring the capabilities of Omeka as a potential collection management system. It serves as a testing ground for evaluating different approaches to digital collection management and exhibition creation.

The weapons collection currently hosted at weaponscollector.com would benefit from structured metadata management using the Dublin Core standard. Dublin Core provides a robust framework for organizing and describing collection items in a standardized way that enhances searchability and interoperability.

Technical Implementation

This Omeka installation is currently running on a LAMP stack server provided by Design Computer LLC, allowing for thorough testing of the platform's capabilities. While managed hosting options are available for Omeka, this self-hosted approach enables more extensive experimentation with features and customization.

Future Directions

  • Evaluation of other Dublin Core-compatible CMS systems like Nuxeo and Vernon
  • Investigation of AI applications for automatically generating structured metadata from unstructured sources
  • Assessment of different approaches to digital exhibition creation

This site represents ongoing research into best practices for digital collection management, with particular focus on how modern tools and standards can enhance the documentation and presentation of historical artifacts.