"iTunes U" for Libraries?

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.

The text was modified to update a link from http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=blb to http://drc.ohiolink.edu/handle/2374.OX/30658 on November 8th, 2012.

The text was modified to update a link from http://dmc.ohiolink.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?page=index;c=forglv to http://drc.ohiolink.edu/handle/2374.OX/59223 on November 8th, 2012.