Case Studies
Discover how our platform empowers organizations to achieve exceptional
results.
Sarah Lawrence College Archives
A Significant Donation and Limited Resources
In 2019, Sarah Lawrence College received what its Library Director, Mustafa Sakarya, describes as "probably its most significant donation and contribution to its evolution that it's ever had," which included a "very significant collection of video material" from a high-profile alum.
Limited Staff: “With limited staff, that was the number one issue. How do we deal with this material? How do we set it up?”
Access Restrictions: “The 400 large video files belonged to corporate entities and came with restrictions on usage.”
Aviary was adopted to address these critical issues, with Mr. Sakarya noting that Aviary "kind of rescued us".
Effortless Ingestion and Cataloging
Granular Access Control
A Growth-Friendly Pricing Model
Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA)
Broadcasting Baltimore: Making Network Affiliate Archives Discoverable
MARMIA is working on a three-year CLIR-funded Broadcasting Baltimore project, which involves the WJZ archives donated in 2017—one of only a handful of comprehensive network affiliate station archives that have survived in the U.S. However, as a small organization, MARMIA struggled with timely completion of projects and providing access.
Limited Searchability: “Before Aviary, finding content required watching tapes as they were digitized or relying on a keyword search.”
Poor Metadata: “The traditional keyword search "wasn't super helpful because it was just what was on the tape labels"”
Difficulty Answering Requests: “Specific reference requests required extensive extra research in newspapers or TV listings.”
The Aviary integration proved "really helpful" in allowing MARMIA to provide more access to their collections. Aviary's power lies in its ability to connect existing archival tools and instantly enhance content discoverability.
Centralized, Explorable Resource Pages: Aviary acts as the central hub, pulling content from the Internet Archive and metadata from ArchivesSpace.
Easy to Read Interface: It puts this information together in one "easy to read and very explorable resource page".
Enhanced Search: The team could "keyword search more effectively through the speech-to-text transcripts", allowing both staff and users to search transcripts to "find what's actually in our collections".
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
Deep Searching, System Integration, and Granular Control:
Creating a Discovery and Access Platform for Video Testimonies
The Fortunoff Video Archive needed to provide access to over 4,400 testimonies encompassing 12,000 hours of recorded materials, but faced significant obstacles with their previous multi-system approach that required users to navigate three different platforms.
Complex Multi-System Access: “Users had to search in the library's main catalog, request access in a second system, and view video in a third system at specific partner locations.”
Manual Access Control: “Complete manual administration of access control resulted in disappointed researchers who had to wait for their request to be approved.”
Granular Permissions Required: “The sensitive nature of collection materials required special considerations, including honoring donor agreements, embargo periods, geographic restrictions, and protecting personal information.”
Metadata Duplication: “The archive needed to avoid duplication of collection metadata across multiple silos and integrate with existing databases of record.”
Aviary provided a unified platform that transformed the user experience from an onerous and labor-intensive process to one as intuitive, simple, and fast as searching and working with text documents.
One Unified Platform: A single hosted platform with one user interface, usable anywhere, replacing the previous three-system approach.
Advanced Search Capabilities: Researchers can now search across extensive metadata, thousands of detailed indexes, and transcripts in seconds, pinpointing exact locations where search terms are spoken.
Sophisticated Access Control: Granular permissions support all complex access control requirements, allowing control without sacrificing discoverability.
Standards Integration: Supports WebVTT and OHMS standards, with seamless integration with ArchivesSpace and Preservica to ensure descriptive metadata is up to date.