AAW Video Library

About the Video Library Project

The AAW Video Library Project was originally conceived by Jerry Hall (CA) and published on the web as an independent website. Jerry envisioned a web site for woodturners to quickly find quality online videos about various aspects of woodturning. It was his intent to build a library of video titles, speeding up the process of locating useful videos available on various sources such as YouTube and Vimeo. It became clear that the original project offered a service that was very useful.

In member's and chapter president's meetings at the Symposium, this became a service that AAW members indicated they wanted. However, because of the design, growing Jerry's video website became an issue. After discussions with Jerry and AAW, Dave Mueller submitted a proposal to the AAW Board of Directors to rewrite the project, using commonly available software and database tools. The Board agreed that this would be useful to the membership and in late 2015 provided help to Dave for development of a new program and database to house the video library. Kathleen Duncan (WA), a member of the AAW Board of Directors and experienced web database designer, worked with Dave to design, develop, and test the new video library. The keywords used to categorize the various videos were developed and refined by Stan Wellborn (DC), John Kelsey (PA), and the Communications Committee

In this design, videos are selected and added to the library by an AAW volunteer. Once a video has been selected, it is reviewed by the AAW Safety Committee to ensure that it complies with AAW safety practices. The Committee uses guidelines developed by Josh Friend, Editor of the American Woodturner Journal. This video site has been entirely developed and supported by volunteers.

The site is written using PHP language with a MySQL database. Much of the PHP code was developed using PHP generator software by AppGini.