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Indiana University and Northwestern University are pleased to announce Avalon 6.2 The newest version of Avalon includes a substantial number of improvements to the playlist feature, various bug fixes, and a preview of the MediaElement4 player. 

 A few of the playlist improvements include:

• A new visibility option, Share By Link, restricts viewing access to a playlist to users who have a unique and obfuscated URL
• Add all selected items to a playlist
• Add a section or all sections of an item to a playlist
• Playlist items can be copied from one playlist to another
• Entire playlists can be copied
• Playlist markers can be clicked to navigate to their respective time points

For the full release notes about Avalon 6.2, please refer to the Release page on GitHub.

If you have any questions, feel free to email a member of the team, ask questions through the Avalon discussion list (subscribe at our Connect page) or the Samvera community lists, or ping us on the #avalon channel on the Samvera Slack team.

Avalon's most recent demo video for Sprint #134 is now ready. The video demonstrates the following features:

• Unique shareable links for sharing private playlists
• Adding sections of an item to a playlist generates descriptive names
• Streaming on AWS Cloudfront with the updated media player
• LTI authentication for playlists

You can view the demo video here: Sprint #134

To view past Sprint demos, view the Avalon Sprint Demo Collection.

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the Samvera Community channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

Playlists in the Avalon Media System continue to receive improvements, as seen in the latest demo video for Sprint #133. This video highlights the following features:

• Copying items from one playlist into another
• Adding multiple items to a playlist using an item's section and structural metadata
• Rewrite of batch ingest functionality

Watch the demo here: Sprint Demo #133.

To view all demos, check out the Avalon Sprint Demo Collection.

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the Samvera Community channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

The demo video for Sprint 132 is now ready for viewing, and demonstrates the following improvements:

• Copy playlist feature
• Improved markers and scrubber for media objects
• Progress toward mediaelement4 upgrade

Watch the video here: Sprint Demo 132.

To view all demos, check out the Avalon Sprint Demo Collection.

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the Samvera Community channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

Avalon Sprint Demo 131 is now ready.

The demo video showcases organizational improvements to Avalon's playlist feature, including:

• Pagination for multiple playlists
• Playlist search bar

Watch the video here: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/wp988j816

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: http://bit.ly/2apvrmd

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

Northwestern University and Indiana University are pleased to announce the release of Avalon Media System 6.1. This update to Avalon 6 includes a full migration path from Avalon 5 to Avalon 6, the ability to control Avalon’s embedded content player via JavaScript, and a variety of bug fixes.
 
Highlights include:

• The full, production-ready release of the Avalon 5.x to Avalon 6 migration tool
• Avalon Player API: control Avalon’s embedded player via client-side Javascript
• Improved behavior for setting object leases and import of bibliographic metadata
• Numerous bug fixes

For more information about the release, see our release notes on Github and the documentation on upgrading Avalon to release 6.1.
 
If you have any questions, feel free to email any member of the team, ask questions through the Avalon discussion list (subscribe at http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect) or the Samvera community lists, or ping us on the #avalon channel on the Samvera Slack team (https://wiki.duraspace.org/x/J4o2BQ).
 
Development of Avalon is supported in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Avalon was mentioned in a recent blog post from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The post, titled "Enhancing Digital Collection Tools Through Collaboration," discusses the recent IMLS grant awarded to Avalon due in part to the project embracing "strategic collaboration." The progress made on Avalon is supported by a partnership between Northwestern University and the Indiana University Libraries.

Read the full post here: https://www.imls.gov/news-events/upnext-blog/2017/05/enhancing-digital-c...

Additionally, Northwestern Libraries featured Avalon in a news update, discussing the grant and the future development of the Avalon Media System.

Read the news update here: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/about/news/library-news/2017/imls-gr...

Avalon demo for sprint 127 is now ready for viewing.

The following features are highlighted in this Avalon demo:

• Standalone IIIF-compliant media player
• Migration from Avalon 5 to Avalon 6

Watch Demo 127 here: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/xp68kg20b

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: http://bit.ly/2apvrmd

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

The Avalon team's demo for sprint 126 is now available for viewing.

The following features are shown in our latest public demo video:

• Michael Klein shows Avalon running in the cloud on Amazon Web Services.
• Brian Keese demonstrates the Player API, allowing for control of Avalon's embedded player by simple javascript.
• Chris Colvard demonstrates features of the Avalon 5 to Avalon 6 migration tool.

Watch Demo 126 here: https://pawpaw.dlib.indiana.edu/media_objects/t722h880z

To view all demos, here's our Avalon collection: http://bit.ly/2apvrmd

Our waffle board, #Avalon slack chat on the HydraPartners channel and our renewed commitment to shareable sprint demos are all measures to bring community insight and inspiration to the Avalon code and design.

We are pleased to announce that the libraries of Northwestern University and Indiana University have been awarded a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to support continued work on Avalon as part of a project titled Avalon Media System: Integrating audiovisual collections with research, digital preservation, and a sustainable developer community.

The aim of this two-year project is to increase adoption of Avalon within the library and archives community by enhancing the value proposition of Avalon and carrying out work to help ensure sustainability:

1.   Integrate Avalon within the Hydra community. We will adapt Avalon to make use of the current Hydra open source repository software stack and will engage members of the Hydra community in development through community sprints. We will also increase the modularity of Avalon so that its components can be more easily integrated into other Hydra-based repository systems, including Hydra-in-a-Box, to provide time-based media access.

2.   Implement a cloud-hosted Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of Avalon. We will work with Lyrasis and DuraSpace on the establishment of a hosted SaaS offering by conducting pilots to help provide cost modeling for Avalon as a cloud based service. 

3.   Connect Avalon to media preservation systems and workflows. We will connect Avalon to long-term digital preservation solutions and improve interoperability with workflow and management tools in order to provide a complete AV preservation and access platform, including work with Artefactual Systems to integrate Avalon with the Archivematica platform.

4.   Enable interoperability with scholarly tools. The Avalon technical team will take a leadership role with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) by contributing to the creation of the IIIF AV interoperability spec and providing a demonstration implementation. 

The functional enhancements to Avalon in the areas of preservation and interoperability with scholarly tools and the support for sustainability generated through SaaS implementation and greater development engagement within the Hydra community will improve the ability of libraries and archives to integrate robust AV media delivery into their digital collections practices and increase the AV collections available as part of the national digital library platform.

For more information, see the IMLS press release and IMLS grant summary.