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 [log in to unmask].
The Indiana University Digital Library Program 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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Jon
Dunn
Associate
Director for Technology
Indiana
University Digital Library Program
IU
Libraries / University Information Technology Services
(812)
855-0953