UC Davis has launched its own iTunes U site that features free access to audio and video files on campus news, faculty research, interviews, music, athletics and academic courses.

The Apple Inc.-hosted site can be reached through the UC Davis portal at http://itunes.ucdavis.edu/. Apple began promoting the UC Davis site on its main iTunes U site beginning today.

UC Davis is among the first 52 colleges and universities nationwide -- and the second UC campus, following UC Berkeley -- to establish a free iTunes U site within the company's iTunes Store.

"This project gives UC Davis a great opportunity to take advantage of free, existing technology and to help a vast audience come to know more about our programs and academic strengths," said Lisa Lapin, assistant vice chancellor for University Communications.

The audience for UC Davis on iTunes U includes many of the campus's prospective and incoming students who expect to be able to find UC Davis in all of the places they frequent online, Lapin added.

Members of the campus community are now being urged to not only be iTunes U users but contributors, too. They can begin putting media recordings up on UC Davis on iTunes U by following directions offered on the UC Davis portal http://itunes.ucdavis.edu/.

"It is IET's goal to provide our faculty, students, staff and visitors with easy access to UC Davis' high-quality audio and video recordings that are both of immediate interest and long-lasting value," said Elizabeth Gibson, director of Information and Educational Technology-Academic Technology Services.

For the UC Davis on iTunes U launch, the site has been populated with nearly 50 videos, mostly developed by University Communications' Broadcast Unit. Also included are speakers' series produced by IET-Academic Technology Services' Media Services Unit as well as "Frontiers," a 30-minute-long public affairs TV interview program jointly produced by University Communications and Academic Technology Services.

UC Davis on iTunes U also includes longer news features, such as the 2005 "Farm vs. Farm" video, which recounts UC Davis' upset of Stanford in football; a profile of UC Davis teaching prize winner Zuhair Munir; the campus's "Sustaining UC Davis" video on campus sustainability; and TV host Huell Howser's tour of UC Davis, "Road Trip: UC Davis." The site also features many brief "NewsWatch" segments about UC Davis, including our campus olive oil production, the future of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and a historian's insights into Buffalo Bill and his era.

UC Davis faculty members are encouraged to add academic courses to UC Davis on iTunes U. Bernd Hamann, a professor of computer science, is the first faculty member to put a course, "Advanced Visualization (ECS277)," on the site.

Windows or Mac OS users can obtain free iTunes software from the iTunes site http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/. They can then download files and play them on an MP3 player, Mac or PC, or burn a copy onto a CD.