Hi Les et al,
Warwick's iTunesU presence has been very successful, in terms of numbers
of visitors. I don't think that a lack of Googleability is a massive
hurdle to visibility: iTunesU is a "destination site" in its own right
(for some folks) rather than just another Googleable page.
Lots of visitors come to Warwick's iTunesU content because Apple market
it for us when they like it! If you think of iTunesU as a place to
market your institution and your content, then it is just one of many
places and actually a potentially very effective one.
And yes, we can and do put the same iTunesU content elsewhere as well:
it just gets a lot more attention on iTunesU.
Jen
Jenny Delasalle
Chair of the UK Council of Research Repositories (UKCoRR)
http://www.ukcorr.org/
E-Repositories Manager
Research & Innovation Unit
University of Warwick Library
Gibbet Hill Road
Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Tel: (+44) (0) 24 765 75793
http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> Sent: 04 August 2009 16:02
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Web 2.0 vs iTunes U ?
>
> Does anyone have any experience with iTunes U? Our University
> is thinking of starting a presence on Apple's iTunes U (the
> section of the iTunes store that distributes podcasts and
> video podcasts from higher education institutions).
>
> It looks very professional (see for example the OU's presence
> at http://projects.kmi.open.ac.uk/itunesu/
> ) and there are over 300 institutions who are represented there.
> HOWEVER, I can't shake the feeling that this is a very bad
> idea, even for lovers of Apple products. My main misgiving is
> that the content isn't accessible apart from through the
> iTunes browser, and hence it is not Googleable and hence it
> is pretty-much invisible. Why would anyone want to do that?
> Isn't it a much better idea to put material on YouTube and
> use the whole web/web2 infrastructure?
>
> --
> Les
>
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