Variations: Building a Digital Music Library Community

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, Indiana University has been a leader in the development of digital library systems for music through a series of projects collectively known as Variations. Most recently, the Variations3 project, funded in part by a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, supported the release of the Variations digital music library system as open source software, freely available for use by other institutions. The Variations system is in production use at seven colleges and universities beyond IU, with approximately ten others actively piloting the system. In this talk, we will summarize the results of the Variations3 project's development and evaluation activities, discuss some of the successes in and challenges to adoption by other institutions, and discuss potential future directions for the project.