Variations 6.0 Pilot

UConnSummer 2010 - 2011

Presented by Anna KijasMusic & Dramatic Arts Librarian

University of Connecticut

October 15, 2010

Background on Digital Audio

@ UConn2004 – present

◦M&DA Library uses a system called Digital Audio Reserve (D.A.R.)

◦ Provides streamed audio access via HuskyCT to music owned by the University Libraries or the faculty member.

◦Access is limited to instructor and students enrolled in participating courses.

◦Access ends once course/semester ends.

D.A.R. vs. VariationsDAR is a course reserve system

◦ Allows students to only access those tracks from an album or collection that have been uploaded and digitized by the M&DA Library.

◦ Does not provide access to entire albums nor to the OPAC record or album information.

◦ No optional faculty or student tools.

Variations is a digital music library (catalog) and learning system◦ Allows students to listen to entire albums.

◦ Includes information for each track and album.

◦ Allows faculty/students to create playlists, drills, and timelines for analysis.

Audio Player

Timeline Tool

Pilot Timeline May – June 2010◦Discussion and agreement for collaboration with

Library ITS departmentJuly – August 2010◦ Implementation and testing of client

September 2010 – June 2011◦Digitizing albums◦ Installation on one M&DAL PC◦Created client download (player and timeline only)◦Continuous testing of client

Time & Effort

Read and understand the documentation – 2 hours (Anna/ITS)

Install the software - 2 days (ITS)Configure, monitor, tweak, etc. the client - 1 hour (ITS)Create the download package for variations – ½ hour

(ITS)Digitize album – 10-15 minutes per album (Anna)

ITS Specifics UConn’s trial Variations server is a RedHat EL 5 virtual machine

hosted on VmWare Server on a Dell PowerEdge 2900 server. The VM has 2 CPUs and 500 MB RAM. RHEL 5 is the OS recommended by the developers. Using it makes

following the installation instructions much easier, as there are many software dependencies that need to be installed for Variations to work.

If Variations is moved into production after the trial, we’ll move the VM into our production infrastructure, which is a highly redundant ESX platform and SAN.

Phase 2 of PilotScan scores to accompany the streaming

audioCreate OPAC accessInstall on all M&DAL PCs

Future PlansInstall on classroom and lab PCsIf approved, replace D.A.R with

VariationsCreate digital music library of core

repertoire