# Presentation: 542658

## Variations2

- The Indiana University Digital Music Library

- Harriet Hemmasi
-  Associate Dean and Director of Technical Services, University Libraries
- Eric Isaacson
- Associate Professor of Music Theory
- Co-Principal Investigator, *Variations2*

## Overview and Update

- PART I

## Variations2: Digital Music Library

- Four-year project
- Based on Indiana University’s original Variations digital library application
- Started October 1, 2000
- Funding from NSF Digital Libraries Initiative Phase 2 (DLI2) program
- Interdisciplinary team of investigators
- Faculty from Music, Information Science, Informatics, Law, Computer Science
- Librarians and technologists from IU Libraries, University Information Technology Services
- Implementation at IU Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses, and 7 satellite sites

## Variations2: Project Goals 

- Develop multiple user applications on a single foundation of content and technology (e.g., music library services, music education)
- Develop a software system that integrates music in multiple media and formats: audio, video, score images, score notation
- Provide users access to a multimedia collection* *of music in a variety of formats and musical styles
- Provide a basis for digital library research (e.g., usability, intellectual property, metadata)

## Variations2: System Architecture

## Variations2:  Accomplishments

- Completed preliminary usability studies
- Created and documented metadata model
- Analyzed and documented framework of rights and exceptions in copyright law
- Designed and developed Version 1.0 of the Variations2 software
- Developed specifications and prototypes for instructional software
- Organized and hosted Second Annual International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR 2001), October 001, at Indiana University, Bloomington

## Metadata

- PART II

## From MARC to Variations2 Metadata

- Uses data from traditional library catalog records
- Bibliographic records
- Authority records
- Addresses weaknesses of traditional records for digitized representations of music
- Lack of structural and administrative metadata
- Limits of conventional online catalog
- Pre-coordinated, multi-faceted headings
- Weak relationships between fields describing separate works
- Insufficient links between multiple versions of the same work

## Container-Centered MARC record

## Work-centered Variations2 Data Model

## Variations2: Metadata Design

- Represent relationships in data model
- Works (musical compositions)
- Instantiations (recordings or scores of individual work)
- Containers (entire recordings, scores)
- Media Objects (sound files, image files, notation files, etc.)
- Contributors (performers, conductors, composers)
- Other complexities: relationships between works
- Enable improved search and navigation
- find related items: scores and recordings of the same work
- Structural metadata to support synchronization
- sound playback (e.g., time offset) and score display (e.g., musical measure, published score page)

## Significance & Potential Impact of Variations2 Metadata

- Domain-specific environment
- User-testing
- Practicality of research-level metadata
- Interoperability
- Endorsement of music communities
- Collaboration and sharing

## Music Learning

- PART III

## Music Teaching Tools

- Audio
- Music score images
- Editable notation
- Other music visualizations (tables, diagrams)
- Static text
- Editable text

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Audio
- check out CD from library
- play in compact disc player
- Drawbacks
- requires library visit
- hard to cue up and play excerpts

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Musical score
- check out from library
- make transparencies
- annotate with pen
- Drawbacks
- slide shuffling
- poor visibility for large scores
- marking pens messy

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Other visual formats
- Form diagram
- tables
- Use transparency and pen or chalkboard
- Drawbacks
- connection to audio and score not clear

- a          b            a          c

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Editable notation
- transparency with lines and pen
- or chalk board
- Drawbacks
- always messy
- not persistent
- hard to read

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Text
- Static: Photocopy on transparency
- Editable: transparency, pen or chalkboard
- Drawbacks
- Hard to read if hand-written
- Not persistent

**Music History Overview**
- Medieval  (500-1400)
- Rennaissance (1400-1600)
- Baroque (1600-1750)
- Classical (1750-1825)
- Romantic (1825-1900)
- Twentieth-Century+ (1900-present)

## Picture 1: Traditional Classroom

- Editable notation
- transparency with lines and pen
- or chalk board
- Drawbacks
- always messy
- hard to read

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Audio
- Play from Variations

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Music scores
- Scanned images
- Document camera
- Drawbacks
- Can be hard to read
- Annotations “permanent”

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Editable notation
- Music editing software

- Drawbacks
- Clunky interface for classroom presentation
- Poor support for music analysis, annotation

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Other music visualizations
- Drawing applications or tools

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Static text
- PowerPoint (also works for static graphics, simple drawing)

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Editable text
- Word processor

## Picture 2: Hi-tech Classroom

- Drawbacks
- Requires multiple applications
- No coordination between components
- Most domain-specific aspects difficult to implement
- Difficult for “normal” users to support all functions

## Picture 3: Variations2 Classroom

## Picture 3: Variations2 Classroom

## Picture 3: Variations2 Classroom

## The Multimedia Music Theory Teaching (MMTT) Project

- Goals
- Environment that supports use of Variations2 content in teaching and learning
- Supports majority of current classroom instructional activities
- Supports greatly enhanced “critical listening” assignments

## MMTT: Design Principles

- Ease of use
- Flexibility
- Component-based architecture
- Synchronization between any combination of components

## ISMIR: International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval

- PART IV

## Annual Conferences

- October 2000, Plymouth, Mass.
- October 2001, Bloomington, Indiana
- October 13-17, 2002, IRCAM, Centre Pompidou, Paris (_[http://ismir2002.](http://ismir2002.ircam.fr/)__[ircam](http://ismir2002.ircam.fr/)__[.](http://ismir2002.ircam.fr/)__[fr](http://ismir2002.ircam.fr/)__[/](http://ismir2002.ircam.fr/)_)

**Notes:**
Growth of ISMIR
International standing
NSF support has been a key feature (providing travel support for some US researchers to attend this year)
Among this year’s agenda items is incorporation of a new professional society
Both HH and EI are presenting at this year’s conference, HH at a keynote session on musical metadata

## NSF Involvement

- Encouraged first meeting (OMRAS)
- Continuing financial support
- Sponsorship of several Music DL projects

## Acknowledgements

- PART V

## Project Participants

- PI: Michael McRobbie
- Project Management: Gerald Bernbom, Jon Dunn
- Steering Group: Blaise Cronin, Gwyn Richards, Suzanne Thorin
- Usability: Andrew Dillon, Mark Notess
- Copyright: Kenneth Crews, Kristine Brancolini, Mary Wallace Davidson
- Music Instruction: Jay Fern, Roberta Lindsey
- Music Theory: Eric Isaacson
- Metadata: Mary Davidson, Harriette Hemmasi
- System Design: Jon Dunn, technical staff
- Networks/Satellite Sites: Douglas Pearson

## Acknowledgements

- This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9909068.  Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.