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Enhancing life-long learning, teaching and research through information resources and services

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Running a Resource List service – opportunities and challenges for students, academics and librarians

Dr Richard Cross, Resource Discovery and Innovation Team Manager

Libraries and Learning Resources

November 2011

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Agenda

• Resource lists at Nottingham Trent University – a snapshot

• The original resource lists challenge

• Implementing Talis Aspire as a resource list solution

• Running a resource list management system – new challenges and opportunities

• Anticipating future developments

Nottingham Trent University and the RLMS

• Information Systems Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Shibboleth

Libraries and Learning Resources Information Resources

Acquisitions Metadata services Document supply and digitisation Technical services

Customer Services Front-line support for students Academic liaison Information literacy Advocacy and promotion

My role in NTU Resource List project…

• Lead Resource Discovery and Innovation Team within Information Resources

• Technical lead for the Resource List project group

• Administrator of NTU’s Talis Aspire Tenancy

• Member of the RLMS management team

• Manage the team responsible for resource list ‘link checking’

• Liaison between LLR and VLE team

• Liaison between LLR and Information Systems (inc. Shibboleth)

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Resource Lists at Nottingham Trent University – a snapshot

Resource lists – the university

• NTU has set out an encouraging resource list policy environment

Requirement for ‘basic onlineness’ for all taught courses

Requirement that all courses benefit from a resource list

• Vice-Chancellor has been an enthusiastic advocate

• Learning and Teaching Co-ordinators have been energised to promote

• Capitalised on good co-ordination between LLR, VLE team and IS team; and academic teams

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Resource lists – the university

• ‘Library manages; academics deliver; students benefit’

• ‘Lists will match the hierarchy and typology of the VLE’

• ‘Lists will be dynamic and year specific’

• ‘Lists will prioritise electronic and online over print and physical materials’

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Resource lists - students

• Delivering resource lists to students, across disciplines and at all levels;

• Populated, authored and owned by academics;

• Integrated with VLE (1-to-1 match: module to list)

• Academics can annotate, rank and organise materials in subject relevant ways

• Materials are validated (metadata and linking) by the library

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Resource lists - students

• Resources on lists are acquired, licensed and discoverable through the library;

• Resource lists are integrated with library discovery systems (link resolver, library catalogue and search portal)

• Resource lists materials can be exported to student reference management application (RefWorks)

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Student feedback - positive

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0PDaF4Ma9jY#t=93s

• Student focus groups elicited consistently positive feedback

• Students are important advocates for increased adoption from not-yet-engaged academics

Resource lists - academics

• Own, author, populate and revise resource lists

• Benefit from automatic and dynamic association with modules

• Access variety of methods for gathering materials (‘bookmarks’)

• Have access to training and support when-and-where needed

• Recognise ‘contract’ with the library to resource lists

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Resource lists – library service

• Resource list management central to library activity

• Front facing teams working with academics; supporting students

• Back-of-house teams working with list validation and processing

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The original resource lists challenge – why did LLR acquire Aspire?

NTU: A renewed push for information skills

• Raising information and literacy skills – an increasing priority

• Key aims: facilitate development of the ‘independent learner’; and support ‘directed study’ through access to information resources

• Student feedback reported failings in delivery of ‘direct reading’

“I can’t find the things my lecturer told me to read”

• Existing resource/reading list management was not up to task

“I can’t find a list of things from my lecturer that I ought to read”

How were reading lists being managed?

• No guarantee to the student: no certainty that course offerings would provide the learner with a reading list; experiences differed

• No consistent ‘format’: not physical format; nor structure; nor extent; nor over reach and range of materials

• No single point of student discovery: some lists were held in the VLE database; some as VLE documents; some as print-only

• No consistent method for library discovery: library sought to acquire as many lists as possible, but only accessed a small percentage (circa 20%)

• No rigorous workflow: lists were not seamlessly processed from the academic, through the library service, to the student

• No fully supportive policy framework: to underpin systems

New Resource List solution had to deliver

• For students….– Consistent, good quality Resource Lists with (much) improved availability– Clearer guidance on different types of material (Essential, Supplementary etc)– Simple access to the lists (primarily through the learning space in the VLE)

• For academic staff…– Easy population of lists from the library OPAC and other sources (with support

for transferring existing lists to Aspire)– Required resources ‘on shelves’ (actual, virtual) quicker, with less effort– Fewer complaints from students!

• For library staff…– Improved internal workflows, and more efficient use of staff resources– Enhanced liaison opportunities with academic staff (a good ‘story’ to tell)– Better targeting of book and other collection budgets– Fewer complaints from students!

Selection process

• Project group set up to procure a software solution

• Business specification document drawn up

• ‘Expression of interest’ sought from software providers

• Talis Aspire – short listed

• Purchase confirmed at end of July 2009

• “Early adopter” status agreed

Implementation plan

• Target live date – September 2010

• No pilot; comprehensive launch

• Parallel strands to implementation process Deliver technical aspects Securing policy environment Providing training to academics Preparing library to underpin live service

• Went live in September 2010!

• Now in second full year of RLMS

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Talis Aspire – some key implementation and service considerations

A centralised or devolved RLMS service?

• Policy and best practice frames RLMS activity

• Lists closely reflects course environment

• Academic-to-module matches are managed from central authority source

• Academic permissions are filtered

• Library acquisitions processing is key

• Local or optional practices shape RLMS practice

• Academics create own lists on-demand

• Academics cascade permissions to each other

• Academic permissions are maximized

• Library involvement may be more peripheral or infrequent

Centralised Devolved

Mediated or direct list creation?

• Librarians author lists on academics’ behalf

• Academics do not need to acquire how-to software skills

• Lots of record creation work required – results are good quality

• As sole list creator, the library has knowledge of all ‘complete’ lists (as submitted)

• List authoring tends to be phased and queued

• Academics gather own ‘bookmarks’ and author and manage own lists

• Academics require training and support in list authoring

• Authoring is done by academics – results may vary

• Library waits for academic to submit list for Library Review before actioning

• Lists are updated dynamically, on-demand; across disciplines

Mediated Direct

Use legacy data or start fresh?

• Loading legacy data (part) populates environment; reduces repetition in record management

• Pre-population may have positive impact on take-up and adoption

• Preparing legacy data may be resource intensive and produce partial results

• ‘Fresh start’ discourages copy-and-paste and encourages exploration of new system

• Poor quality legacy data ingest may be disincentive to adopt

Use legacy Fresh start

Slow burn or big bang implementation?

• Piloted launch allows tweaking and embedding of processes

• Targeting eager schools and academics may establish positive momentum for others

• Phased withdrawal of existing systems may be less disruptive

• Would you describe your boss as ‘happy in the slow lane’?

• What about those poor students in non-pilot schools who have to wait?

• A mix of new and old systems might confuse and frustrate students

Slow burn Big bang

The nature of the ‘library commitment’

• The library brokers an ‘if you adopt, then we will…’ agreement with academic managers

• Library resourcing realigns to support resource lists with appropriate priority

• Library invests staff resources in validating and correcting list items (metadata, linking)

• The library is more circumspect; or encourages list creation from existing (or newly acquired) resources

• Academics are made responsible for list quality (metadata, linking)

More Less

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Talis Aspire – technical implementation at Nottingham Trent University

Talis Aspire – a hosted SaaS application

• As part of the implementation process, Talis will work with a new customer to:

• Customise the look-and-feel of the Tenancy (including branding)

• Integrate the local LMS OPAC (Bookmarklet metadata extraction; Availability look-up)

• Load a course offerings hierarchy (if available) for click-through Browsing

• Configure and carry out the batching loading of legacy resource list data (with LMS record augmentation where possible)

• Secure authenticated access to the Tenancy (premised on Shibboleth FAM) and devolved permissions

Customising our Aspire tenancy

• Basic branding

• Navigation elements

• CSS changes

• Integration of chat support services

• Google Analytics

Integrating the Library Catalogue

• Bookmarklet – configuring a z-look-up (z3950) to enable two-click bookmarking from the local library catalogue to ‘My Bookmarks’ in Aspire

• Data loading augmentation – where ‘minimal’ legacy resource list data exists (like spreadsheets with an LCCN entry), Aspire can carry-out a look-up as it loads the data to improve or replace the source record

• Availability (end user) – through the z-look-up to configure real-time Availability look-up in the full-view of a List Item

• Availability (library staff) – an on-demand z-look-up to offer stock and holdings data in Report and Acquisitions reviews

Integrating the link resolver

• Talis has licensed use of CrossRef service for Aspire – DOI (Digital Object Identifier) parsing is key mechanism for retrieving electronic journal metadata

• Customers with a link resolver can have this auto-embedded in resource list items

Reflecting the course hierarchy

• In addition to Search and Deep-link URL discovery, Aspire provides a Browseable Hierarchy (e.g. College > School > Department > Module > List)

• If you have an authority source for this data, Talis are able to load this course hierarchy into Aspire

Integrating Shibboleth (authentication)

• With customer input (on IdP side), Shibboleth based authentication (against the Talis Aspire SP) enables students, academics, librarians and administrators to login to the application

• Remember: no login is required to view any public list in any Aspire Tenancy

• Students login – to retrieve their ‘My Lists’ and annotate

• Academics login – to edit and manage their module Lists

• Librarians login – to assist academics; progress Acquisitions

• Administrators login – to manage the Tenancy and its users

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Integrating Shibboleth (authorisation)

• Aspire manages ‘who can do what to which Modules’ through a range of different parameters (Roles, Permissions and Scopes)

• When combined with ‘devolved permissions’ in Shibboleth, deliver combined authentication and authorisation

Students –

Automatic read-only association with their modules

Academics –

Automatic editing privileges for their

module lists

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VLE linking web part deployed

• Uses the Aspire list-linking API for dynamic deep-linking

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Running a Resource List service – opportunities and challenges

Resource lists – challenges for students

• Incomplete coverage (correlates to subject area to significant extent)

• Resilience of old school and alternative solutions by academics

• Inconsistent length, format and presentation

• Library resource budgetary constraints

• Resource format constraints (publisher profiling of eBooks)

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Resource lists – challenges for academics

• Need to learn a new authoring tool

• Academic ownership and the need to invest

• Limitations over current ‘smart’ bookmarking to Aspire

• Needing to anticipate library lead times

• IP and the openness of Aspire lists

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Resource lists – challenge for library service*

• Required a significant investment in training and advocacy by Liaison Librarians

• Acquisitions processes have been revised fundamentally

• CLA digitisation has had to align with new RLMS workflows

• Metadata librarians have had to acquire new expertise in authentication-aware linking

• Keeping RLMS and VLE ‘in synch’ requires ongoing staff resource

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* Much depends on the degree to which the library manages and mediates the RLMS service

The Library Review of Resource Lists

• Academics submit completed resource lists for Library Review

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Review of lists: Academic Liaison

Team

Processing of Lists:Information Resources

Making resourced lists available to

students

The processing of resource lists under review

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• An opportunity in IR to rethink and refashion existing workflows

• Aim to deliver the most efficient and timely resourcing of lists

• Profound impact on existing ways of working – for all teams involved

The Information Resources workflow

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Link checking

Digitisation

Acquisitions

• Researching e-availability

• One-touch ordering, whenever possible

• Updating the RLMS and LMS in parallel

• Improving quality of descriptive metadata

• Updating electronic links to be persistent

• Ensuring access available from any location

• Processing items marked for digitisation

• Enabling linking through the RLMS

• Supporting delivery through VLE

Resource lists – challenges for library service

• All stock management and collection development processes have had to become RLMS-aware

• Funding has been realigned from ‘collection development’ to meet the RLMS commitment

• Aspire has no file store (no ‘upload your document’ feature) but link-to management has its own challenges

• RLMS is a ‘good news story’ for the library to pitch to academics; but in the current context of a tightening of budgets

Local technical and service innovations

• Relic – Resource List Item Checker (using an Aspire API)

• http://www.urko.org.uk/library/rlms/relic/index.php?type=doi&search=10.1177/0309132509105004

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Local technical and service innovations

• SlyFox (SFX OpenURL generator) and CatNip (Catalogue DLG)

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Local technical and service innovations

• Uses the Bookmarking API for Aspire (now supports OpenURL)

• Enables any OpenURL supporting service to become a bookmarking source

• Method would work with other link resolvers

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• Any metadata received by SFX can be sent to Aspire

• Several other customers have deployed this target service

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RLMS and Aspire – future developments

Aspire enhancements anticipated

• Extending the bookmarking tool (to improve quality of item records)

• Better Management Information reporting (especially self-service)

• Acquisitions workflow extension (enabling LLR to bring more processing into Aspire)

• Improving RefWorks integration (moving to selective, direct export)

• Synchronisation API VLE-to-Aspire (to dispense with manual processes)

LLR RLMS service developments

• Managing the new resource list adoption drive

• Integrating RLMS with new discovery solution Primo (Ex Libris) [bookmarking; availability]

• Identifying new e-formats and print editions for existing resource list materials

• Integrating PDA (Patron Driven Acquisitions) into the RLMS workflow

• Improving management of CLA processing (requesting, processing, linking and delivery) for resource lists

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Questions or comments?

NTU Resource Lists

http://resourcelists.ntu.ac.uk

Richard Cross

Resource Discovery and Innovation Team Manager

Libraries and Learning Resources, Nottingham Trent University

richard.cross@ntu.ac.uk