Talis Insight Europe 2017 - Reflections on a year using Talis Aspire - UWE and The University of Bristol

Matt Durant, UWE and Rob Challis, University of Bristol present

1. Reflections on a year using
Talis Aspire
Rob Challis
[email protected]
Implementation Officer
University of Bristol

Matt Durant
[email protected]
Collections Librarian
UWE Bristol

2. Overview
●UWE Bristol
○Project approach
○Outputs
○Reflections
●University of Bristol
○Project approach
○Reflections
○Digitised Content

3. UWE Bristol
●28,000 UK students
●4,000 International students
●3,000 staff
●Q16 NSS: 92%
●Aspiration to be print free by 2022

4. The project approach
●Project team led by Deputy Librarian
○University Stakeholder meetings every six weeks
○Reporting to Learning, Teaching and Student Experience Committee
●A lot of groundwork
●Supporting academic community to create their own lists
●Software implemented in July 2016

5. Implementation
Timeline
Jun
2016
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan -
Mar
2017
May -
Sep
2017
Technical
implementation
X X X
Early adopter sessions X X
Library staff briefings X
Talis training day X
Phase 1: pilot of
processes
X X X X X
Phase 2 X X
Full rollout X

6. Phase 1 - ‘Team Aspire’
Four academic liaison colleagues
○Covering all four faculties and
campuses
○Given ‘case load’
○Fed back using online form
○Regular meetings via Skype
○Act as ‘champions’
Four Collections staff
○Met weekly, for half an hour
○Occasionally joined meets with
liaison colleagues
○Test new process, made changes
and tweaks
○Documented
2 Graduate Trainees

7. Deliverables

9. Reflections: our approach
Benefits
●No expectation that Librarians will
set-up lists from outset
●Early adopters are supporting
fellow colleagues
●Close working relations were set-up
with key academics
●Support material written as
questions arrived
Disadvantages
●We had to let poor quality ‘slide’ to
support good will
●Bookmarking tool!
●‘Too busy’ and ‘why can’t you do
this for me?’
●Very specific support queries
●Cannot guarantee targets will be
met

10. University of Bristol
●21,185 students
●2,679 members of academic staff
●1,409,000 print items in catalogue
●1,319,760 ebooks
●255,155 serial titles (print and ejournal)
(Source: SCONUL Annual Statistics return, 2015-16)
NSS scores for Q.16:
2013 2014 2015 2016
81% 85% 79% 87%

11. The project approach
●The implementation of Talis Aspire is being run as an 18 month project by the
University’s Strategic Projects & Programmes department.
●The Project Board identifies and approves the scope of the project, and
advises on priorities.
○Deputy Director of Library Services (project sponsor and board chair).
○Representatives from the Library’s Academic Engagement and Content Procurement
teams, as well as from the IT Services department and the academic community.
●The Project Team performs the implementation.
○Project Manager.
○Implementation Officer, and two Migration Officers.
○Digital Library and IT Services representatives, for systems integration and advice.
○Change and Communications team.

12. Reading Lists
●Pilot units chosen from
English, History,
Mathematics, Oral &
Dental Sciences, and
Veterinary Sciences.
●Lists created by project
Migration Officers.
●LTI links added to
Blackboard prior to the
beginning of term.

13. Reading Lists
Benefits
●It motivated departments to get
involved with Reading Lists as soon
as possible.
●It removed the “no time” excuse.
●It enabled the project team to really
get to grips with TARL, and
understand how best to use it at
Bristol.
Disadvantages
●Lists for transferral were of “varying
quality” - they were sometimes hard
to interpret.
●It removed the impetus for
academics to fully engage with the
service.
●It potentially creates an expectation
that the Library will create lists in
future.

14. Digitised Content
●We had approximately 4000 existing scans associated with the Library’s
eReserve service.
●We originally intended to perform a bulk upload of scans in summer 2016,
using the TADC Import function.
○The bulk upload does not include a compliance check.
○It was difficult to match the PDFs in our archive to our existing request metadata.
○The way that digitised content is provided through TADC was too different from our existing
set up to manage in the available time.
●eReserve scans were actually transferred to TADC by creating reading lists
for each unit in TARL, and using the Request Digitisation function, during
March 2017.

15. Questions
Matt Durant
[email protected]
Rob Challis
[email protected]