PowerPoint Presentation

Avalon Media SystemJon DunnIndiana University Bloomington

Evviva WeinraubNorthwestern University

Open Repositories, 201616, June 2016

Avalon Media System is an open source software system, originally developed by the libraries at Indiana University and Northwestern University, for managing and providing online access to large collections of digital audio and video for purposes of teaching, learning and research. Avalon was initially released in 2013, and as of early 2016, there are at least six adopters of Avalon but no consistent pathway for adopters to contribute financial or development resources to the project.In 2015, we were awarded a grant from the Mellon Foundation to create a long-term sustainability plan that includes better integration with the Hydra community, a strategy to increase adoption, and a pilot of a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering in addition to its current locally-installed model.This presentation will provide an outline of Avalons path forward and how it corresponds with directions of the Hydra and Fedora communities. We are radically changing our development strategy as we move forward, and we will discuss our strategic initiatives and outline new areas of exploration and development. Additionally, we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages we have seen in our partnership model and how we plan to evolve that model as we move forward with Avalons development.

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Avalon, A History

Evviva2

What is Avalon?Open source software system that enables libraries and archives to provide access to audio and video collectionsHydra Solution BundleGoals:Easily installable and configurableServe a variety of use cases and institutionsCreate a basis for sustainable development

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Why Avalon?Existing repository systems dont work well for time-based mediaIssues: integration with streaming servers; hard to support time-based navigation; difficulties in integrating access controlExisting media systems dont work well with repositoriesIssues: focus on short-term access for teaching and learning; limited metadata and access control capabilities; integration with preservation workflows

Most repositories can deposit AV but the UX for ingesting and delivering is not optimal because you are providing the file to the user as a download. IF they are being used with a streaming system, they arent providing a secure access and cant handle authorization.

There are lots of delivery options, like MAMs or online video tools like Kaltura but they are more concerned with immediate access. They arent concerned with long-term media access, they dont support Library metadata standards, and they arent designed to support long-term preservation activities. 4

Project Funding2010 2011: IMLS Planning Grant2011-2015: National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services2015-2016: Andrew W. Mellon FoundationPartnership between libraries at Indiana University and Northwestern University

Discuss motivations

To fill this gap we identified.

The planning grant really helped us identify this gap and to go after funding to support hiring of staff to build out these tools. The planning project talked with a lot other institutions to try to identify common needs and gaps. Conducted a series of surveys to focus the work of the project.

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Goals of current Mellon grantDevelop additional Avalon functionalityConduct studies of use of audio and video collections by humanities researchersDevelop and implement a community-funded business and governance modelDeploy Avalon in a hosted SaaS model for testing/pilot

One of the other goals of the grant is to work on Spotlight integration, but were exploring different ways we can deliver that functionality to be more flexible.

Point 3 Worked with Ithaka S+R to identify some different models for community supported technologies6

Features of Avalon

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Avalon ArchitectureAvalon Media SystemArchival StorageAuthentic-ationLMS, websitesILSHydrant Rails AppAll UsersDesktop,MobileBrowser,Drop boxSearchBrowseViewIngestDescribeManageIntegrationsCollectionManagersAuthoriz-ation Avalon code consists of Hydrant Rails App and the Rubyhorn gem. Other pieces are leveraged.

UsersFedoraSolrMatterhornMedia ServerMedia Player(mediaelement.js)

Can-Can

Ruby-horn

Hydra Head

Black-light

Omni-Auth

Release History0.1 July 20120.5 October 20121.0 May 20132.0 October 20133.0 May 20143.1 July 20143.2 January 20153.3 March 20154.0 September 20155.0 May 20166.0 August 2016

Faceted browse via Blacklight

Desktop/Mobile Player

Navigation by Structure

Embedding

Manage Content

Add item: Upload, Dropbox, or Batch

Descriptive Metadata: MODS

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Structural Metadata

Access Control

Avalon Use Cases

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Use Case: Archival Film

Use Case: Media Within Archival Collections21

Use Case: Online Exhibits22

Use Case: Online Publishing23

Use Case: Consortial Licensed Video

Use Case: Video Reserves in Learning Management System

Use Case: Mass Digitization

Moving Forward

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Lessons Learned from Advisory BoardClearly define and focus on our core productEnsure that Avalon is complementary to, not overlapping with, other solutions in the repository and media spaceKeep the product as general purpose as possible to help drive adoptionFor many institutions, modularity and ability to integrate with existing repository solutions is a key requirementPartnerships should be chosen wiselyReduce technical debt (e.g. keeping up with Fedora 4 and Hydra) is important for local installationsIntegration with a variety of research and analysis tools will be important for scholarly uptake

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Avalon 5.0 Launched June 13thOrganization and Sharing FeaturesCreate private or shareable PlaylistsAdd whole audio and video files or clips to playlistsContent Ingest APIA lightweight API for importing metadata and links to existing derivatives into Avalon.Access control enhancementsIP based access controlDate digitized field for master files.Grant access permission for items for set periods of timeMore granular searchingSearching now includes section and structure labelsDate digitized provided as admin facet.Accessibility phase 2Support for ingesting/delivering captions in VTT and/or SRT filesPlayer shows captions when availableEnd user can toggle captioning on/off via player control - mouse and keyboard.Final Fedora 3 Release

This release is our last Fedora 3 release. It will provide a path for folks to migrate off Variations to Avalon(~11 institutions run Variations). The two major points for this release will be providing an ingest method (IU is currently in the process of ingesting our variations content into our production Avalon, ~10,000 of ~30,000 are currently ingested) and the playlist feature. Variations users will be forced to abandon Variations at some point in the nearish future because the next release of OS X will remove Quicktime's support for certain functions Variations need. These features have been deprecated for some time, but Apple is just now officially removing them. There also is not a supported version of Quicktime for Windows 10. So bad news for Variations but good news for Avalon adoption29

Avalon 6.0 (Expected October 2016)Feature parity with R5 but on Fedora 4Additional transcode engine support (besides Matterhorn)Upgrade to Hydra 9 / Fedora 4Support HLS Flash and retire RTMP supportLDAP based groups for assigning collection staff rolesOther possible featuresBetter visibility of access control status for bulk selected items

We are not basing the next release on PCDM, instead were doing a direct port of our current models

Migrating from Fedora 3 to Fedora 4 Fedora 4 running with our current data model (so datastreams, etc). Ensure no features in Avalon become nonfunctional during the upgrade

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Future Development Strategies

Avalon as a SaaSCloud deployment modelWorking to develop partnership with Infrastructure Based Service companiesInterested in sites willing to pilot

Gemification of Avalon Architecure (Expected release Winter 2017)Re-factoring Avalon code for paying off technical debtModularizing core Avalon componentsMaking Avalon components easier to install for other institutionsRe-architecting for full service and gems for other open source repository solutionsBuilding up from CurationConcerns

Creating a Robust Open Development Community Using other open source projects as a guidePotential introduction of Avalon Developers Conference to train and introduce code base to wider developer audienceIntroduction of community based sprints

Watching Hybox as they go through some of these same issues.

Release 7 (gemification) is too fuzzy at this point to discuss in detail.

The next two releases are primarily architecture/rearchitecture focused, they will have some features, such as exhibits via Spotlight, dropping flash, and implementing an embeddable LTI player, but those features are primarily related to the promises made in our Melon Grant. 31

Community Growth

New Adopters:University of AlbertaUniversity of VirginiaWashington University, St. Louis

International Interest from Australia, Spain, Qatar, and Afghanistan.

Also, there are a number of institutions using Variations Digital Music Library developed at IU back in the early aughts that we hope to work with to migrate to a future version of Avalon. IU will be making that migration this fall. 32

Questions?www.avalonmediasystem.orggithub.com/avalonmediasystem

jwd@iu.eduevviva.weinraub@northwestern.edu

Sandbox you can try out via the website.

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Discussion QuestionsWhat other use cases do you have for A/V access?What do you look for in adopting or investing in an open source solution?What barriers do you encounter in adopting or investing in open source?What factors influence your choice of SaaS vs. on-premise implementations?