Reading Lists

Email circulated by School admins to schools - Sent Friday 12th May

Dear all,

The deadline to submit your essential reading to the library is 22^nd June. Thank you to those of you who have already done this. We will be processing the lists in the order they are published, so please submit as soon as you can.

For a recap of what you need to do, please see this page: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/c.php?g=380528&p=4859992, and do let me know if you have any questions.

Moodle integration

You will not be able to add your 20/21 reading lists to Moodle until you have published them on Talis Aspire. Once they are published, you will be able to update your existing links to show the 20/21 reading list on the 20/21 version of Moodle. This is not an automatic process and you will need to update this for each section you have added. Once this is done, any further changes to your reading list will be reflected as usual.

Training sessions

We have run several training sessions already, and they were all recorded. You can find the recordings here: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists/trainingrecordings

We will be repeating this overview session again in the coming weeks, along with two more targeted sessions – one on creating a list, and one on bookmarking specifically. These will be at a pace to allow you to follow along and are intended to provide practical experience of using the system. You can book onto a session here: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists/training and these sessions will again be recorded.

Best wishes

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Email circulated by School Admins to all Schools - Sent Tuesday 26th May

Dear all,

We have received a few questions around the reading lists process for this year. I hope this email will clarify things – as ever, please do get in touch if you have any queries.

Apologies if you have tried to find your 2020/2021 reading list and been unable to. There was a technical problem with the rollover process, which led to a delay. I am happy to say this has now been fixed, and you should be able to find your lists as previously stated.

How to submit your reading list

• Check Talis Aspire to find your reading list. You can do this at https://rhul.rl.talis.com/index.html, by logging in with your College credentials, and searching by course code. Please make any changes to the list for Academic Year 2020-2021.
• If you need to create a new list for a new course then you can do this and guidance can be found here http://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/c.php?g=380528&p=4827174.
• If you need to make changes to your list go ahead, using the information in this guide. Please note that essential items have to be submitted by 22^nd June and recommended/further by 31^st July. We will be processing lists in the order they are submitted so please submit as soon as you are ready.
• To submit your list, click the Publish button towards the top of your list.
• If you submit a list before 22^nd June that has a mixture of essential/recommended/further items we will contact you after the 22^nd to check that your recommended/further reading is up to date.

Online Availability of items

• As access to physical items is not currently possible and we may go through periods of inaccessibility due to potential future lockdowns, being able to access resources online is very important.
• If you would like to see if a new essential resource you are adding to your list is available online then please email us on readinglists@rhul.ac.uk with the details and your course code and we will check the online availability and get back to you within 5 days.

Training

• Thank you to those of you who have already edited your lists or attended one of our training sessions. If you have not been able to attend a session and would like to, we are running more on 1^st & 3^rd June, with further dates to be added. You can book here https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists/training and you can also view recordings of previous webinars.
• We have a guide to reading lists, which you can find here https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists. This contains a growing set of training materials, along with more information about changes to the process for this year. We are also adding to the FAQ regularly, so please let me know if there is anything that you would like more information on.

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Email circulated by School Admins to all Schools - Sent Friday 15th May

Dear all,

As part of the Flexible Education project, there have been some changes to the reading list process this year. This email will cover what you will need to do, and the help and support you can expect from the Library. As ever, if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Deadlines

You need to submit your Essential readings to the Library by 22^nd June. Please do this as early as you can, as we will be processing lists in the order they are received.

Your Recommended and Further readings should be submitted by 31^st July, and we will operate the same system for these.

Talis Aspire

The use of Talis Aspire (http://readinglists.rhul.ac.uk) is now required. If we have previously held a reading list for you, it will have been copied over to the next academic year (in a similar way to Moodle). Please make your changes to the list labelled ‘Academic year 2020-2021’.

We are running training sessions to allow you to familiarise yourselves with Talis Aspire. You can book these sessions here: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists/training. More dates will be added soon, and we will also be expanding our existing training materials so you have access to the information whenever you need it.

Online availability

As you may know from the recent exercise to get Essential resources for this year’s students, some items are not available in formats students can read online. Additionally, some items which have been available temporarily over the last few months will not be available from August. 

We are happy to check online availability of any materials you may be considering, please email ReadingLists@rhul.ac.uk with the specific items you want checked (this can include books, journal articles, films, and music) and your course details, and we will aim to get back to you within five working days.

If you are confident most materials are available, you can publish your 2020-2021 reading list on Talis Aspire and we will process the list in the usual way.

List length

Lists of up to 100 items will be checked. Our suggested breakdown of resources is to have a maximum of 20 Essential, 40 Recommended and 40 Further items. For courses with weekly readings, we suggest the following per week: 1 Essential, 2 Recommended, 2 Further. We will not check availability of Further reading at this time. When making purchasing decisions and advising students, we use the following as a guide:

Essential - vital to students' understanding of the module. Recommended - supports understanding of the module. Further - supports students’ background research and assignments

Physical item availability

With the Library building closed for the foreseeable future, we will be unable to obtain physical materials (e.g. books, dvds, scores) until further notice.

Help is available

You can find all of this information on our guide to reading lists: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/readinglists. This is being expanded all the time.

You can also book an appointment with your Information Consultant for specific queries http://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/informationconsultants