2024-03-11 Avalon User Roundtable Meeting
Meeting Time
Monday, March 11 at 1 PM EDT
Zoom Link
https://iu.zoom.us/j/84620830059?pwd=bWo3R081M3BtaytFMjZnS0FzQkd2dz09
Agenda/Notes
Avalon user survey
Please fill out ASAP if you haven’t already!
roadmap items can be left blank or marked “not sure” as needed
Version 7.7 is released! (see Github)
we have identified a few bugs, so anticipate a 7.7.1 release fairly soon
most critical is that .srt will not work for captions in 7.7; need 7.7.1 for that. video.js player in Ramp does not natively support .srt captions.
Update on duration of media item in results list vs. player
Transcript searching phase 1 for next release - any additional feedback?
Repository search: Transcript Search and Indexing · Issue #5708 · avalonmediasystem/avalon
Has Caption and Has Transcript - this will show to users / anyone how much of our collection has these. Could this be good/bad?
Could we align transcript with timestamps as part of upload if file does not have timestamps?
Need to test whether .docx or .txt with timestamps if allows users to navigate to timestamps in transcript?
Kee-Young: at this point, don’t have a lot of records with transcripts, so a little nervous about having Has Caption or Has Transcript as a facet. Jason: thumbs up to the idea of a facet. Jeannette: this would be useful for disabled users.
Kee-Young: they’d like the search box to retain the search term so users can add on to terms with successive searches; see Aviary
Kee-Young: what is the matching configuration for Avalon Solr? Looks like it isn’t doing any stemming of plurals. UMD currently advises staff users to use exact title to get to item.
Kee-Young: Date facet shows top results ordered by # of results. Wouldn’t it make more sense to order by date? What are other popular sites doing? This was reported as confusing by a user.
Search within an item: Search within media item · Issue #5709 · avalonmediasystem/avalon
No real use case yet for multiple sections, each with their own transcript
UMD: do have use case for really long videos, like 2 hours, and how will this work with a very long transcript. IU has some captions for 90 minute lecture videos that we could experiment with.
Items from other institutions
Kee-Young: Avalon is on 7.4 and has been improving IIIF manifest generation. Is there an easier way for users to find the IIIF manifest for the item.
Like Aviary, Avalon or Ramp should have some kind of button for downloading the IIIF manifest
Example public item manifest from UMD: https://av.lib.umd.edu/media_objects/0p096758h/manifest.json. Why are these not working in Mirador?
Currently, only Ramp, Clover, and Aviary IIIF player support HLS streaming, which is how Avalon provides access to media files.
Future agenda items?
Demo of LTI integration with course management system
Potential conversation around upgrade process for institutions that have been using Avalon for awhile (how to handle code customizations, etc.)
Bulk metadata editing discussion - what are the needs for this in Avalon? Are there tools in the community that could be re-used to help?
Summary of survey responses
Attendees
Jon Cameron (Indiana University)
Emily Lynema (Indiana University)
Kee-Young Moon (UMD)
Jason Coleman (NEC)
Jeannette Ho (Texas A&M, cataloging & metadata)