Variations end of development and support

Jon Dunn — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 13:12:10 -0000

December 8, 2016 (revised August 21, 2019)

Dear Variations community:

In 1996, the Variations digital music library system was first placed into production at Indiana University’s Cook Music Library, originally developed as a partnership between IU and IBM under the vision and guidance of Dr. David Fenske. Since then, thanks to generous support from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Institute of Museum and Library Services, and continued support from IU and from many of you, Variations has had a major impact on music teaching, learning, and research at IU and around the world.

Now, as we mark the 20th anniversary of Variations use, the Variations code base is nearing the end of its lifespan, as technological changes make it no longer possible to be maintained in its current form. In particular, QuickTime for Java is no longer being supported or developed by Apple, making it difficult or impossible to run the Variations client on modern versions of Windows and Mac OS, and users no longer expect to have to download and install a client application in order to be able to use networked resources.

For these reasons, going forward, Indiana University is no longer able to provide code updates for Variations and can only provide very limited help and troubleshooting support for current Variations users.

Avalon Media System

Anticipating this day, and recognizing that library streaming needs now extend well beyond music audio, several years ago, the Indiana University Libraries partnered with Northwestern University Libraries to build a new, modern, media access repository system: Avalon Media System https://avalonmediasystem.org/. Avalon is an open source system, built on the Samvera (https://samvera.org/) and Fedora (http://fedorarepository.org/) repository software platforms with generous support from IMLS and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Avalon does not replicate all of the functionality of Variations, particularly the pedagogically focused features such as the Timeliner and Listening Drill. It also does not support scores. However, it offers a number of new areas of functionality not present in Variations, including support for video, granular access control and permissions, integration with learning management systems, an embeddable audio/video player, and a completely web-based interface.

Avalon is currently available for download and installation, and is in production in at least six institutions in the US and Canada. In addition, we are working with several partners to offer cloud hosting options for Avalon for institutions that do not have the resources to or do not want to run the system locally. For more information on emerging hosting options, please see http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/blog-post/cloud-based-hosting-announcements

Migrating from Variations to Avalon

In 2016, Indiana University successfully migrated its 28,000 audio items from Variations to Avalon. Both systems were used in parallel during the Fall 2016 semester, and in early January 2017, IU’s Variations instance was decommissioned. IU moved its musical scores that had been in Variations to another Samvera application based on Hyrax (http://hyr.ax).

Each institution implementing Variations has made a number of local choices that make it impossible to create a one-size-fits-all recipe for moving from Variations to Avalon, but IU and the Avalon project are happy to share the documentation and tools we have developed, in order to assist institutions that will need to undertake a similar migration. For more information, please see our blog post at http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/blog-post/migrating-variations-avalon

Audio Timeliner 2.0

In addition, I would like to point out that Dr. Brent Yorgason at Brigham Young University, one of the original developers of Variations when he was at IU, has adapted the standalone Variations Audio Timeliner to work without QuickTime. This new version, known as Audio Timeliner 2.0, currently only works with local audio files – not audio in Avalon – but we are investigating how easy it might be to adapt to work with Avalon-hosted content. More information on Audio Timeliner 2.0 is available at http://tinyurl.com/audiotimeliner

Questions?

If you have additional questions or would like advice on how to handle your specific migration situation, please post to the variations-discuss mailing list or avalon-discuss-l mailing list for follow-up. For information on how to subscribe to avalon-discuss-l, please visit http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect

Thank you for your support of Variations over the years!

Best regards,

Jon Dunn
Indiana University Libraries

Indiana U offers open source digital music library software

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:40:08 -0000

Indiana University today announces the release of open source software to create a digital music library system. The software, called Variations, provides online access to streaming audio and scanned score images in support of teaching, learning, and research. Variations enables institutions such as college and university libraries and music schools to digitize audio and score materials from their own collections, provide those materials to their students and faculty in an interactive online environment, and respect intellectual property rights. A key feature of the system for faculty and students is the ability to create bookmarks and playlists for use in studying or in preparing classroom presentations, allowing easy access later on to specific audio time points or segments. A key feature for libraries is a flexible access control and authentication system, which allows libraries to set up access rules based on their own local institutional policies. This software is the culmination of nearly fifteen years of development and use of digital music library systems at Indiana University. Creation of the current Variations software platform was originally funded by the National Science Foundation. In 2005, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Indiana University a National Leadership Grant to extend this highly successful system to the nationwide library community. Beyond IU, the software is currently being used at the Ohio State University, University of Maryland, New England Conservatory of Music, and the Philadelphia area Tri-College Consortium (Haverford, Swarthmore, and Bryn Mawr). This open source release of Variations complements IU’s earlier release of the open source Variations Audio Timeliner, which lets users identify relationships in passages of music, annotate their findings, and play back the results with simple point-and-click navigation. This tool is also included as a feature of the complete Variations system. Indiana University plans to offer a free one-hour Variations webinar at 4:00 PM EST on March 4, 2009 for institutions and individuals interested in learning more about the system. To register, e-mail mnotess@indiana.edu. The Indiana University Digital Library Program and Cook Music Library created Variations in collaboration with faculty and students in IU’s Jacobs School of Music. The IU Digital Library Program is a collaborative effort of the Indiana University Libraries and the Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information Technology. For more information on the Variations open source release, see: http://variations.sourceforge.net/

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Variations end of development and support

Indiana U offers open source digital music library software