Best Practices

How to create and submit a great reading list

These guidelines have been created to help you and your students to get the most benefit from your reading lists on Talis Aspire.

In order to be most useful for students, reading lists should:

Provide clear structure – ideally by week / term / topic to enable students to plan ahead with their studies
- see our new templates which you can copy from (you must be logged in to Talis to view)
Indicate clearly which readings are essential and which are further or background, to enable them to prioritise their readings effectively
Feature essential seminar readings which the Library is able to provide electronically where possible, to ensure all students are able to complete the required reading
Ideally contain no more than 100 individual items, and provide clear information for students on how to engage effectively with the list
- This is supported by using features such as Notes for Students and Reading Importances (see the section on these features further below)
- Students benefit from clarity of expectation, and readings which are realistic and achievable.

Consider Student Feedback

Students find online reading lists extremely helpful for their learning. In recent User Experience Focus Groups, when we asked them what makes a ‘good’ reading list, they had lots of comments to share:

"I find it useful when my reading list is concise and clear – often there are specific chapters which are recommended."

"I particularly like the subheadings/annotations of ‘essential’, ‘further reading’ and ‘recommended’ as they help me plan which books I will read and when."

"I like it when there are questions to answer when reading, as this helps me focus on what I'm reading."

"Inter-connectivity between books; i.e. it's nice to have book that complement and contrast others on the list. This really helps you understand the nuances of any given period better."

"I believe it is also important that a reading list is manageable. This would perhaps mean that the resources vary in length. For example, a good reading list would include short introductory works, as well as more comprehensive works."

Take full advantage of all the features the platform has to offer

Setting Reading Importances

Why set reading importances?

Once you have added a resource to your list, it is very important that you set its Reading Importance. This allows students to prioritise their reading and helps the Library know how many print copies/e-book licences may be needed to meet anticipated demand.

There are four reading importances to choose from:

Essential
Recommended
Further
Suggested For Student Purchase

Please note: Please try to set the reading importance for each item on your listbeforepublishing and submitting the list for review. This will avoid the Library putting your list on hold while you are contacted to obtain this missing information, which will speed up the process of the Library ordering and processing any new or additional material needed for your teaching.

Setting reading importances improves the reading list experience for all users:

Helps students plan their reading

Importances can help guide students’ learning by identifying readings which may need to be discussed in class, studied for exams or consulted when researching for assessments.

Helps the Library ensure there are enough resources to meet anticipated demand

The item importances, along with other factors such as the anticipated student number, help the Library determine how much print and/or e-resource access they should order).

Helps list owners know which resources are available sooner

Avoids confusion and potential delays at the Acquisitions stage.

How to Use the Reading Importances Effectively

Below is advice on how the Library recommends the different importances should be applied, as well as a brief explanation of how the Library treats these from an Acquisitions perspective.

Notes for Students

Student notes are indicated by the mortarboard icon, and are visible to anyone viewing the list.
They are useful for highlighting chapter readings or important sections, or anything else you would like students to know.
Student feedback indicates that they really appreciate when the student note feature is used to help guide their reading.
Some of our academic users really put this feature to good use and suggest particular problems, questions or themes to consider when consulting the resource.

Notes for Library

Notes for the Library are only visible to logged-in academics and library staff. (They are not visible to students.)
They are indicated by the classical temple icon.
They can be used to communicate requests such as a particular edition that is required, to specify that copies should be moved to a certain section of the Library, or anything else you would like the Library to know that might help them source the correct materials for your reading list.
Please be aware that Library staff may also use Library Notes to record actions taken or messages to academics. In particular, we will use it to indicate if an ebook was unavailable for us to purchase.

Using Paragraphs

The "Add Pragraph" feature, found on the action bar, allows list owners to add a note or information to their reading list without it being associated with a specific item or section on the list. This feature is appropriate for larger chunks of text as it allows some formatting (bold, italic, underline, numbered or bulleted lists) as well as the inclusion of URLs and email addresses as clickabile hyperlinks.

This feature is often used to provide an introduction to the module, expectations for reading, or any other helpful information for students using the reading list.

Below are a few examples of different ways our Warwick colleagues have used this feature:

An example of a list using the paragraph feature.

A screenshot showing another list that uses the paragraph feature to its benefit

The Library