Thanks, to our friends at Open Culture for drawing our attention to the New York Public Library’s new iTunes page. The page, which went live yesterday, gives you access (free, of course) to a host of wonderful cultural productions staged by NYC’s foremost library.

Perhaps most notable is the page’s extensive collection of “conversations” with some of today’s leading authors — John Updike (transcript), Umberto Eco (video), Paul Auster (video), to name a few (Click here for full author list here). You can also search the library’s large Jazz Oral History Project, which features interviews with an impressive number of important jazz figures. Finally, you can listen to what is currently the library’s most heavily downloaded podcast — Christopher Hitchen’s now well known debate with Al Sharpton.

As a last aside, OC mentions that you don’t need an iPod to access many of NYPL’s offerings. You can find many of the same materials on the library’s web site. And you’ll want to explore the institution’s various rss feeds.