Reading lists: a guide for academic staff

For further guidance on making the best use of online reading lists and Library resources, contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.

Library Services are committed to improving engagement and the user experience with our reading list system, Talis. Whether you’re a list owner, support other staff in creating their lists, or a casual user of the platform, your insights are invaluable. By understanding what you like, dislike, and find confusing about the current system, we can enhance it to better serve you and your students.

One area we’re keen to better understand any issues with this is the annual rollover process, which happens every summer when the current list is retired, copied and a new version awaits publication for the next academic year. The new lists are created in 'Draft Mode' at this point to encourage annual checking of each list by academic staff. 

Unfortunately, only 60% of these lists are typically published by the start of term. This means the other 40% of module lists are unavailable to students who are looking for them. Consequently, this impacts resource availability, prevents the Library from acquiring new resources for those modules, and hinders our ability to ensure equality and consistency of access to resources.

Leaving an anonymous comment on our Padlet board on how you currently use Talis, and your honest thoughts on it, would really help us to introduce changes that make the reading list system work better for you and your students. Your feedback will guide improvements and enhance the reading list system for everyone. Thank you for your participation!

Above are a selection of some of the comments on the padlet board so far. Why not add your own!