Variations end of development and support

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