Brooklyn Museum has just joined some of the other non-profits hosting content in the Beyond Campus area of iTunes U (tip of the hat to Despi at IMA for initial info on this). For us, the idea seemed like a good one because it allows us to host long-format content in a setting where people want to find it. Many of the Universities using iTunes U are hosting lectures and we’ve got a ton of artist talks and panel discussions, so this seemed like the right location to do it. In addition, we’ve always wanted to find an easy way our visitors could download our audio tour content right to their iPods and the iTunes U setup accomplishes this. Finally, all of our content is all in one place. We’ll still be uploading to YouTube and blip.tv as appropriate, but iTunes U gives us the ability to host everything in one location without file size and length limits.

When working with the iTunes U template, we wanted to keep our categorization as simple as possible. Most of the traffic to our own website goes to three areas: Exhibitions, Collections, and Visit. In iTunes U, you’ll find our content divided into three categories to mirror this idea. The jury is still out on if this will work for us in this venue, but we are giving it a go and keeping it simple for now. On the right hand side, we are owning the “wisdom of the crowd” and showcasing top downloaded content which seems like an interesting way to get visitors deeper into the site.

If any colleagues are thinking about doing this, feel free to give us a ring if you need any information.