Academic adoption at University of Liverpool Talis Insight APAC 24th July 2015

Carole Rhodes Faculty Librarian

Structure

● University of Liverpool and its drivers for Aspire

● Academic adoption: what worked?

● Advice based on our experience

● Achievements in the first two years

● Aims for next year

Drivers for implementing Aspire

● “Some of the books on our reading list aren't in the library”

● “Books on the reading list are not always available.”

● “The library should have multiple [copies] of books that [are] included on module reading lists.Books that are on module reading lists should be grouped together so they can be found easily.”

LibQual survey 2014

Reading Lists @ Liverpool

● Improves communication between academics and the library about what materials are required.

● Facilitates easy access for students to the items their lecturers are recommending.

● Improves the student experience (and that of the library and the academics!)

Academic adoption: what works?

● Planning for success

● Pre-populated lists

● Dedicated Liaison Librarians

● Workshops for module leaders

● Good practice examples

● Making connections

● Peer persuasion

Planning for success

● Implementing the system is only the start

● For two years we have had a Reading Lists Success Team with a project plan and membership from across the library

● Enabling us to explore a wide range of activities to facilitate and monitor academic adoption

Pre-populated lists

● Give your academics something to work with

● Reading Lists @ Liverpool launched with 1,700 lists

● Mostly imported from our previous ‘system’: catalogue records with a reading list field added by Acquisitions staff

● Now Liaison Librarians will create the bare bones of a list to get new academics started

Dedicated Liaison Librarians

● Act as a communication channel

● Liaise with departments to find out current modules

● Create lists and invite academics

● Take Reading Lists @ Liverpool out to departmental meetings and individual academics’ offices

● Support academics in their use of the system

Workshops for module leaders

● Bookable lunchtime workshops

● We have run 18 sessions and seen 99 academics

● Advance preparation – check out academics’ engagement in advance, get them to create profiles and/or accept List Publisher invitations

● Have multiple librarians on hand to answer questions from academics (recommend minimum 1:3 ratio)

I went to the workshop on the Library’s excellent Reading Lists @ Liverpool enterprise, a scheme that allows you to construct a reading list via the library site (but which is not limited to the library holdings and allows links to external resources to be added in one place, even letting media clips be inserted) which you can then link to your module VITAL site and by which students can access the catalogue, the resources and their availability as relevant, directly. It’s very impressive and, crucially, easy to use. I’d encourage you all to think about using it and if you need any help getting started I’ll do my best to assist.

Dr Rebecca Dixon

School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

Good practice examples

● As librarians, we don’t dictate how long a list should be, what it should contain or how it should be structured.

● We show a variety of different lists and encourage academics to edit lists in the way that works for their teaching.

Making connections

● As part of the VITAL Baseline – minimum standards for modules in the VLE - a link to the relevant list on RL@L must be included

● When searching DISCOVER (EDS Discovery tool), academics can easily ‘Bookmark to RL@L’

● The library catalogue (Innopac Sierra) shows which reading lists a book is on

Peer persuasion

● Academics who come to workshops are asked for feedback and if they would be a contact for their department.

● Our short video, winner of the Talis Creativity Award 2015, showcases academics’ use of the system, with the aim of persuading their colleagues.

● We find an academic is most easily persuaded by another academic!

Advice from our experience

● Respond to the needs of your academics We took on board feedback from our early lunchtime workshops, doing advance preparation and having more staff on hand to help.

● Avoid a heavy-handed approach! Academics have so many systems to contend with, we prefer to bill ours as one that is helpful to them. Most are won over.

Achievements in the first 2 years

● April-Sept 2013 implementation of Talis Aspire

● Oct 2013 1,700 lists, 13k visits

● Oct 2014 1,890 lists, 21k visits

● June 2015 2,120 lists 84% coverage of current modules 496 academic List Publishers

Aims for next year

● Continue roll-out, targeting academics who’ve not yet engaged

● Engage academics in Digitised Content

● Publicise our new Collection Development & Management policy

● Increase academic understanding of importances and the review process

● Benchmark our performance against other institutions using Talis Aspire Reading Lists

Thank you! Reading Lists @ Liverpoolhttp://libguides.liv.ac.uk/readinglists

Carole Rhodes

Faculty Librarian