Planning your academic rollout of Reading Lists? This presentation covers the academic adoption roll out success at the University of Liverpool. Thanks to Carol Rhodes for preparing this presentation.

1. Academic adoption at University
of Liverpool
Talis Insight APAC 24th
July 2015
Carole Rhodes
Faculty Librarian

2. 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

4. 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

5. 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!)

6. Academic adoption: what works?
● Planning for success
● Pre-populated lists
● Dedicated Liaison Librarians
● Workshops for module leaders
● Good practice examples
● Making connections
● Peer persuasion

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

12. 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)

14. 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

15. 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.

21. 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

25. 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!

27. 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.

28. 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

29. 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

30. Thank you!
Reading Lists @ Liverpool
http://libguides.liv.ac.uk/readinglists
Carole Rhodes
Faculty Librarian