  We investigate eta photoproduction in the $N^{*}(1535)$ resonance region
within the effective Lagrangian approach (ELA), wherein leading contributions
to the amplitude at the tree level are taken into account. These include the
nucleon Born terms and the leading $t$-channel vector meson exchanges as the
non-resonant pieces. In addition, we consider five resonance contributions in
the $s$- and $u$- channel; besides the dominant $N^{*}(1535)$, these are:
$N^{*}(1440),N^{*}(1520),N^{*}(1650)$ and $N^{*}(1710)$. The amplitudes for the
$\pi^\circ$ and the $\eta$ photoproduction near threshold have significant
differences, even as they share common contributions, such as those of the
nucleon Born terms. Among these differences, the contribution to the $\eta$
photoproduction of the $s$-channel excitation of the $N^{*}(1535)$ is the most
significant. We find the off-shell properties of the spin-3/2 resonances to be
important in determining the background contributions. Fitting our effective
amplitude to the available data base allows us to extract the quantity
$\sqrt{\chi \Gamma_\eta} A_{1/2}/\Gamma_T$, characteristic of the
photoexcitation of the $N^{*}(1535)$ resonance and its decay into the
$\eta$-nucleon channel, of interest to precise tests of hadron models. At the
photon point, we determine it to be $(2.2\pm 0.2)\times 10^{-1} GeV^{-1}$ from
the old data base, and $(2.2\pm 0.1) \times 10^{-1} GeV^{-1}$ from a
combination of old data base and new Bates data. We obtain the helicity
amplitude for $N^{*}(1535)\rightarrow \gamma p$ to be $A_{1/2}=(97\pm 7)\times
10^{-3} GeV^{-1/2}$ from the old data base, and $A_{1/2}=(97\pm 6)\times
10^{-3} GeV^{-1/2}$ from the combination of the old data base and new Bates
data, compared with the results of the analysis of pion photoproduction
yielding $74\pm 11$, in the same units.
