I’m one of those people who like to listen to Liberty Classroom lectures on the road via iTunes. I’ve downloaded each lecture course and run into some problems when adding the lectures to iTunes. If you are doing the same, here are some helpful hints to make the process easier.
1) Downloading the ZIP file of the lecture is the easiest way to get started. The ZIP files are large, so depending on your bandwidth, this can take a while.
2) Extract the MP3s from the ZIP file into a folder of your choice.
3) In iTunes, add the lecture files by using the “Add File to Library…” option. Browse to the folder where the MP3s are located, and multi-select all of the lecture files. They will now be imported into the iTunes Music library.
4) Unfortunately, Liberty Classroom does not use a consistent naming convention across its lectures, so it’s time to do some cleanup.
5) Find the newly added files in iTunes. Highlight them, then right click and choose “Get info,” which should pull up the “Multiple Item Information” dialog box.
6) Here’s my convention for standardizing the tags:
Name: The name of the lecture (typically I don’t change this)
Artist: The name of the lecturer (e.g., Tom Woods, Gerard Casey, G.P. Manish)
Album Artist: Liberty Classroom
Album: The name of the lecture (e.g., “Introduction to Logic”, “Introduction to Austrian Economics”)
Track: Make sure the track numbers match the lecture order. In some of the lectures, this information is not included.
Artwork: The MP3s typically do not include artwork. To remedy that, from the Liberty Classroom website, right click on the lecture graphic, choose “Copy Image”, then go back to iTunes and paste it in the “Artwork” tag section.
Genre: I use “Audio Book”
5) If you want the Lecture to appear in iTunes as a book rather than music, click on the “Options” tab of the “Multiple Item Information” dialog, Change the “Media Kind” to “Audiobook”, and change “Remember position” to “Yes”. With these changes, the lecture will appear as a book and you’ll be able to resume from the spot you left off.
With these changes, I have a consistent way of finding the lectures, either by the actual lecturer or by “Liberty Classroom. By classifying the lectures as books, they stay separated from my music.
Hope this is helpful.
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