VARIATIONS: a digital music library system at Indiana University

The field of music provides an interesting context for the development of digital library systems due to the variety of information formats used by music students and scholars. The VARIATIONS digital library project at Indiana University currently delivers online access to sound recordings from the collections of IU’s William and Gayle Cook Music Library and is developing access to musical score images and other formats. This paper covers the motivations for the creation of VARIATIONS, an overview of its operation and implementation, user reactions to the system, and future plans for development.