Come See Avalon at OR 2016 - DUBLIN

We are packing our bags, dusting off the passports, putting the final touches on our PowerPoints and heading off to OR 2016!

We hope you'll come see us present if you're in Dublin next week.  

Here's where we'll be:

MONDAY, July 13 9:00am - 11:00pm · Location: Lloyd D 

Intro to Hydra and Making it Useful in Your Organization

Chris Awre2, Karen Estlund1, Ellen Ramsey3, Evviva Weinraub4

1Pennsylvania State University, United States of America; 2University of Hull, United Kingdom; 3University of Virginia, United States of America; 4Northwestern University, United States of America

This two-hour workshop will provide those new to Hydra or considering implementing Hydra with a base knowledge of the Hydra framework and community. The workshop will begin with a showcase and review of Hydra implementations and repository functions currently used in select instantiations. The workshop will also provide an overview of the Hydra framework demonstrating how different components fit together, how the community structure supports and furthers Hydra as a whole, and examples of outcomes from the working and interest groups. During the second half of the session, participants will split into two tracks: Service Management and Project Management. The Service Management group will identify shared key performance indicators for a Hydra implementation and design ways to share data across institutions. The Project Management group will map out a development roadmap for a feature or customization to demonstrate a sample process for one’s local Hydra implementation. The workshop will conclude with a question and answer session where participants will share concerns and map out problems and challenges brainstorming solutions and paths forward.

 

TUESDAY, July 14, 4:00pm-5:30pm · Location: Maxwell Theatre

Researching Researchers: Avalon Media System's Ethnographic Study of Media Repository Usage

Deborah I. Cane, Carolyn Caizzi

Northwestern University Libraries, United States of America

The Avalon Media System is an open source system, developed by the libraries at Indiana University Bloomington and Northwestern University, for managing and providing access to large collections of digital audio and video. The freely available system enables libraries and archives to easily curate, distribute and provide online access to their collections for purposes of teaching, learning and research. The Avalon community is made up of a dozen educational, media and open-technology institutions and the project is funded in part by a two-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

With the use of the Mellon grant, we have designed, developed and are currently conducting a study of scholarly use of audio and video collections by researchers over multiple disciplines within the Humanities. Our methodology for the study is seated in ethnographic inquiry and user experience modeling, and we will use these results internally to guide future feature prioritization for Avalon.

The study is being conducted with three different kinds of data collection:

1. Environmental Observation

2. Interviews based on observations

3. Diary Study

Avalon team members will present early findings, themes, potential user stories, and a current assessment of our ethnographic study focusing on process, product and participation.

 

THURSDAY, July 16 11:00am-12:30pm · Location: CA 1

Avalon at a Crossroads: From Collaboration to Community

Jon W. Dunn1, Evviva Weinraub2

1Indiana University, United States of America; 2Northwestern University, United States of America

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 Avalon’s 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 Avalon’s development.

 

HydraDAM2: Repository Challenges and Solutions for Large Media Files

Karen Cariani1, Jon W. Dunn2

1WGBH Educational Foundation, United States of America; 2Indiana University, United States of America

Indiana University and WGBH are jointly developing a preservation-focused digital repository system for audio and video, known as HydraDAM 2, using the Hydra technology stack and Fedora 4 repository platform. It is well known that media preservation files can be very large, have complex structure, and require significant processing to enhance access.

Although Fedora 4 is designed to be more capable of storing large files directly within the repository, there are still reasons to consider storing the preservation files outside the repository with pointers to the actual storage locations. HydraDAM 2 is being designed to support two different storage models: one that stores media files in the repository (potentially via an integrated hierarchical storage management system) and one that stores files offline, with only pointers and metadata in the repository.

In this presentation, we will discuss the architecture and design of HydraDAM 2, briefly demonstrate the system as developed to date, and walk through the workflow process. We will also discuss our roadmap for future development.

 

We will of course be at lots of other events, learning and live tweeting!  

Find us! Chat with us!  

 

 

 

 

 

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