Recently, Apple announced a major change to its popular iTunes U platform that affects how public and private media are organized. Because of this change, a new Columbia on iTunes U channel dedicated to publicly accessible media collections will be released in May 2011. This new channel will improve access to public collections on iTunes, iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch), and web browsers using iTunes Preview. The current Columbia on iTunes U channel will remain as a private repository for academic and course recordings and administrative content, where a Columbia UNI is needed for access. CCNMTL staff are working with contributing schools and departments to make this transition as smooth as possible.

Please note that Columbia University will be absent from the iTunes U Store listing of “Universities & Colleges” for a short time during this transition. However, all of Columbia’s iTunes U content can still be accessed directly via https://itunes.columbia.edu.

Since 2008, CCNMTL has maintained the Columbia University iTunes U channel, which has become a popular repository for faculty, schools, departments, and campus institutes to deliver media. We have seen a 53% year-to-year increase in course collections and the site now contains over 10,000 tracks. Each week, these tracks are downloaded over 20,000 times. This new channel will showcase public Columbia media, making it even more accessible to the world.

(Article corrected May 12, 2011. Searching for Columbia no longer gets access to Columbia on iTunes U and the new public version was not released in early May as originally planned.)