Mills Music Library will partner with DoIT to test the applicability of Apple's iPod to course instruction. The iPod, a portable MP3 player, offers a 5-gigabyte hard drive that can store up to 1,000 songs in a palm-sized device with a ten-hour battery life.
A pilot program to circulate course reserve listening and repertory pack iPods will be undertaken during late spring and intersession. In order to comply with copyright regulations, the devices will be locked and the programs not able to be downloaded to home computers. Rather, a student will request an assignment and an attendant will download it to the player, which then will circulate to the student overnight. We expect the players to assist those students who do not own home computers and cannot take advantage of electronic reserves, as well as those who wish to take the players into a practice room to work with an accompaniment, etc.
The Library also plans to use the portable playback devices to experiment with higher sound quality for our online course reserves. Currently, we use Real compression for our sound files. iPod offers playback of MP3 files as well as the "Legacy" file forms .wav and .aiff. All of these are larger files than our Real compressions and offer better playback quality, up to and including CD equivalent sound.
Instructors who are interested in participating in the pilot project should contact Geri Laudati.