Presented by Jon Dunn and Claire Stewart at the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Membership Meeting in San Antonio, TX, on April 4, 2013.

1. The Avalon Media System
An open source audio/video system for libraries
and archives
Jon Dunn
Claire Stewart
CNI Spring 2013 Membership Meeting
4 April 2013

2. About Us
• Jon Dunn
– Interim Assistant Dean for Library
Technologies, Indiana University Bloomington
Libraries
– Project Director, Avalon
• Claire Stewart
– Head, Digital Collections and Scholarly
Communication Services, Northwestern University
Library
– Co-Product Owner/Director, Avalon

3. Agenda
• Project background and overview
• Motivators and use cases
• Demo
• Release 1 pilots
• Plans beyond Release 1
• Integration scenarios
• Development process and community
• Questions and discussion

4. Project Objectives
Goal: Create an open source system to enable
libraries and archives to provide online access to
video and audio collections
• Digital audio/video management and delivery system, focused
on needs of libraries and archives
• Follow an agile, open source development model
• Leverage existing technologies, where feasible
• Communicate and market the project broadly to increase
awareness and grow the community of users and developers

5. Project Overview
• Funded in part by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of
Museum and Library Services
• Original name: Variations on Video
• Planning grant:
– August 2010 – July 2011
• Implementation grant:
– September 2011 – October 2014
• Partnership between libraries at Indiana University and
Northwestern University

6. Project Partners and Collaborators

7. What needs are we trying to serve?
• Libraries and archives (and museums?)
• Wide variety of audio/video collections, uses, and
access needs
– Licensed educational video collections
– Video/audio e-reserves
– Archival collections
– Open access collections
• Research and teaching & learning use
• Long-term management and access
• Tie-in with preservation

8. Motivators

9. Existing Solutions Incomplete for
Libraries and Archives
• Institutional and digital library repositories
– e.g. DSpace, Fedora, Digital Commons, ContentDM
• Web video services
– e.g. YouTube, Vimeo
• Classroom lecture capture
– e.g. Echo360, Mediasite, Opencast Matterhorn
• Online video environments
– e.g. Kaltura, Brightcove
• Streaming servers
– e.g. Flash Media Server, Real Helix, Wowza, Red5
• Digital asset management systems
– e.g. OpenText, NetXposure, etc.

10. Bridging library and academic IT
content management

11. Release 1 (“any day now!”)
• Mobile and desktop playback support
• Authentication and group-based
authorization
• Faceted search, using Blacklight
• Manual and batch import

12. Demo

13. R1 Pilots

14. Avalon Architecture
Integrations Users
Avalon Media System
ILS
Hydrant Rails App Desktop,
LMS, webs Media Player Mobile
ites Omni- (Matterhorn Engage) Search
Auth Browse All Users
Authentic- Hydra Ruby- View
ation Head horn
Can- Black-
Authoriz- Browser,
Can light
ation Drop box
Ingest
Archival Describe Collection
Storage Fedora Solr Matterhorn Media Server
Manage Managers
 Avalon code – consists of Hydrant Rails App and the Rubyhorn
gem. Other pieces are leveraged.

15. Beyond R1 (Partial List, Unprioritized)
• Authorization improvements & integrations
• Structural metadata for navigation
• Technical metadata
• Workflow & batch loading improvements
• Playlists and clip making
• Easy player embedding for other contexts, e.g., course
management, websites, publishing sites
• Transcripts
• Publishing out to other systems
• More optimization for mobile
• Focused accessibility work
• Improvements based on pilots, user feedback, usability testing
Releases every three months

21. Development Team

22. Development process
• A single, blended team
• Scrum
• F2F for scrum
training, prioritization
• Daily standups, IRC

23. Working towards community
• Lessons learned in development process
• Working with Hydra community
• Working with OpenCast matterhorn

24. Participation
• Try out R1 (any day now!):
http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/try-out-avalon
• Download R1:
http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/download
• On GitHub:
https://github.com/avalonmediasystem/avalon
• Read our blog:
http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/blog

25. Questions?

26. Learn More About Avalon
• Website: http://avalonmediasystem.org/
• Listserv: E-mail avalon-l-subscribe@indiana.edu to subscribe
• Social media:
@avalonmediasys
facebook.com/avalonmediasys
Or contact:
Jon Dunn: jwd@iu.edu
Claire Stewart: claire-stewart@northwestern.edu