A recent posting in the Chronicle of Higher Education “Wired Campus” section describes the new iTunes U portal, “a spot on the site that will collect college lectures, commencement speeches, tours, sports highlights, and promotional material, all available at no cost.” (If you have iTunes on your desktop/laptop, you can use this link to visit iTunes U in the iTunes Store.) Now, according to the Apple press release, “content from iTunes can be loaded onto an iPod® with just one click and experienced on-the-go, anytime, making learning from a lecture just as simple as enjoying music.”
How about iTunes U as a content delivery platform for libraries. What kind of content could we put into iTunes U? Here at OhioLINK, we have the Borror Laboratory of Bioacoustics Recorded Sounds and Foreign Language Video Instruction that are open to the public. (Granted, we might have to do some file format conversions to meet requirements for iTunes U.) With more students and researchers using devices such as iPods and services such as iTunes U, as long as we are not entering into an exclusive agreement for delivering such content, why not meet the users where they are.
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iTunes U is a terrible idea. A terrible, terrible, terrible idea. Why not use standards? If you want to do podcast-y distribution of material, why not throw up something like a Drupal instance with the Audio module and serve things from there. At least then people will be able to use whatever they want to listen to content. Using iTunes U traps people into using iTunes as a client, and it’s not cross platform.
I doubt pmurray was advocating putting all of the stuff in only iTunes. The content is likely already online, but hosting it in iTunes U to make it easier for some to access and use it, or to find a wider audience, sounds like a decent plan to me. Many of the iTunes U areas also link out to the actual sites. For example MIT OpenCourseWare is on iTunes U as well as the web.
Putting your library’s unique material in as many places as possible to help people find it sounds good to me. I agree with pmurray on this one and he actually beat me to the post.
I can appreciate your view, John. Since many of my views posted on DLTJ appear to say that I think highly of the open source methodology/ethic, my endorsement of iTunes U could appear to be selling out. (Or seen as supporting my infinitesimal stock interest in Apple, Inc.) In fact, I value a more pragmatic view of getting information to users. Or — to put it into a catch phrase — to meet the users where they are. In this case, a lot of them are in iTunes looking for content to put on their iPod. As long as the arrangement is not exclusive (meaning that an iTunes U agreement would force us to publish some content only in iTunes U) then I think there is a large bang for our buck to be there. Just as I see it is worthwhile to put that same content on the open web in a more standards-oriented manner.
(As a side note, this value explains why I’m interested in, but not excited about, Second Life. Yes, it’s neat and a potentially useful mode to deliver content and services to users. But there simply aren’t enough users there to justify spending the great deal of required to adequately bring our content and services there.)
Does that help clarify my intentions for posting?
argle frumph grr harrrumph, yeah, as long as iTunes U is not an exclusive arrangement, it’s passable. OK, let me amend, as long as at LEAST one other standards-compliant content equivalent delivery method is used, then okay.
As for SL, I’m right there with you. I view it as useful for modeling — making walkable buildings or what have you — but for social interaction or what’s typically thought of as library work, I don’t see it really going anywhere.
Fair enough. We (OhioLINK) have a ways to go on the “at LEAST one other standards-compliant content delivery method” — but there are some versions of an implementation plan that could bring iTunes U and a standards-compliant scheme at the same time…
I think it’s a great idea. I subscribe to many many podcasts via itunes, but in other places as well. Meeting the students where they are is the biggest point, and itunes will use that. I subscibe to the MIT podcasts, and more.
I would like to even see video podcasts celebrating the collections of our libraries. For example, our digital projects dept has an online exhibit on George Catlin- I think this would make a neat video to be downloaded.
http://digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/catlin/index.asp
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