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Reading List/Resource List solutions

These are essentially 'curation' tools. Academics (with the help of librarians) create online resource lists - by module/course even week of study. Resource may be further categorized as 'essential' or background' reading. In this way they make 'discovery' largely redundant- least for many undergraduates

In the UK and other countries such as Australia and New Zealand older 'course reserve' modules have almost entirely replaced by more comprehensive Reading List solutions such as Talis Aspire, Ex Libris Leganto or Kortext Keylinks. Reading list solutions are increasingly adopted in the US and worldwide.

Reading list management systems (RLMS)


Aspire (Talis-Part of Technology from Sage)
An online resource list platform, fully integrated with your library ecosystem. Reduces the burden of reading list administration.Insights on student reading benefits academics and libraries alike. Easier for students to find and engage with the right resources at the right time

BLUECloud Course Lists (SirsiDynix)
“BLUEcloud Course Lists will enable your academic staff to create resource lists for each course they teach. For example, professors could organize materials by week, or state whether reading is required or optional, ensuring that students have access to the materials needed for academic success”

eReserve Plus (eReserve Pty Ltd) eReserve Plus Reading List Management and Copyright Reporting Repository provides educational institutions with complete control over the creation of course reading lists and their digital copyright materials access and reporting. eReserve Plus enhances an institutions ability to manage its copyright obligations by greatly reducing the time and resources spent on copyright materials management and reporting, and also reduce the statutory and commercial risk of non-compliance. It a cloud deployed system suitable for use across multiple campuses and can be directly integrated with a variety of Learning Management Systems (Blackboard, Moodle, Desire2Learn/Brightspace) and library systems. eReserve Plus is a well established system and has full support for copyright law from a variety of territories including Australia, UK, New Zealand, Singapore, among many others.

KeyLinks (Kortext)KeyLinks is a platform for academic, public or health libraries, where users can organise and manage content such as journal extracts, articles, case reference files and training materials into easily accessible reading lists. In August 2017, CLA and Kortext announced their acquisition of the rebus:list reading list management system from PTFS Europe. .

Leganto (ExLibris,Part of Clarivate)Leganto is a cloud‑based service for creating, maintaining, monitoring, evaluating, using, and sharing course readings.This tool saves instructors time and effort, brings additional materials to their attention, helps prevent copyright infringement, shows instructors what their students are doing and thinking, and facilitates collaboration among instructors.

Readinglists.co.uk (Blackwells)
A Blackwell's service that enables lecturers and others to submit reading list details and as a result enable ordering of books on the list from Blackwell

Reading/course list solutions and the move to engagement with content

What students want and need: How to deliver course materials to drive student success.

Findings from a June 2023 study of students in the US, UK and Australia. Ex Librias, Part of Clarivate. October 2023

A report released by Alterline and sponsored by Ex Libris, integrated library system has unveiled important insights into emerging digital learning trends. The surveyed 1,509 students from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The findings show that students have a clear preference for digital materials and an expectation that these resources will be made easier to access.

Farewell discovery – hello curation and engagement
UKSG Conference 12-14 April 2021 (Group A Breakout session No. 8 ). Over the last 20 years or so, universities have made considerable investments in library centric discovery services. Nevertheless, for some students, especially undergraduates, discovery has become largely irrelevant. They simply log on to their learning management system to find ready prepared links to the print and electronic resources they need that week for their course or module. This is typically because the learning system is linked to a library managed reading/resource list solution. Reading/resource list solutions are essentially ‘curation’ tools. By curation I mean selecting, refining and arranging to add value. The content of a reading list is curated primarily by academics who select the best resources and list them.

The next step is helping students engage with the content. This has become increasingly important in a ‘flipped classroom’ environment where COVID has accelerated the trend to an online learning environment. We are now seeing the rise of specific solutions to better enable engagement with content. They typically encourage group ‘community’ interaction with students who are asked to analyse the content and engage with the reading itself. This UKSG presentation describes and analyses this important trend towards the better curation of, and engagement with content. It encourage librarians to work more closely with university teaching and learning staff and technologists to adopt approaches and solutions that help students better engage with content which, in turn will lead to better learning outcomes

Talis Elevate. For collaborative annotation

'Social reading' functionality in Ex Libris Leganto

Ex Libris Leganto now includes 'social reading' functionality to 'encourage students to engage with their course materials in a meaningful way' 'With the Leganto tool, students can now:

  • Share comments, questions, and feedback by marking up course materials
  • Annotate PDF files assigned by the instructor
  • Communicate ideas with classmates
  • Add private notes

Communication occurs when it’s most relevant and effective. Students are encouraged to participate and become immersed in the course content in new ways.'

The rise of library centric reading list systems

The rise of library centric reading list systems.By Ken Chad. Higher Education Library Technology (HELibTech) Briefing Paper no.5 . July 2018. The last five years have seen a sizable increase in the number of universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand deploying library centric reading lists solutions. A notable change in the last year or so is that library resource list solutions are beginning to be adopted in the US. The paper suggests that reading/resource list systems will have a major impact on the global library technology market just as library ‘discovery services’ did over a decade ago. The paper analyses the impact of reading list solutions on students, academics/faculty, the library and the library supply chain. It looks to future developments including the more extensive use of analytics and the increasing role of reading lists in pedagogical ‘scaffolding’.

Reading List Market Shares (Change 2017 to 2024)

The main solutions deployed in UK HE are Aspire, Leganto and Keylinks

Jan 2017May 2020Jan 2024
Ex Libris (Leganto)113143
Kortext (Keylinks)10611
Talis (Aspire)807972

reading_list_market_share_jan2024.jpg

Reading list management systems (RLMS)

Who has what Reading list system

Click on the heading above to see a list of UK HE institutions with what reading list system they use (listed alongside other systems)

Reading lists articles & reports


Further citations (a fuller list of citation from the 'Meeting the Reading List Challenge' website)

Digital-first and student success with Talis Aspire at Northumbria University . by Natalie Naik. 14 October 2019

The library at Northumbria University and Talis have worked in partnership to develop library analytics for student success. The university has been working with the Civitas Learning student success analytics solution. Blog post The blog links to a more in depth white paper:-

“At Northumbria University, an institutional Educational Analytics project in partnership with Civitas Learning required sources of data from across the university to supply a custom predictive model designed to generate actionable insight and facilitate intervention. Given academic libraries are multidisciplinary resources used by all students and that sector research has previously demonstrated the relationship between library use and student success we felt we had a clear value proposition to offer to our University’s Educational Analytics project and in so doing, a chance to make a new contribution to student success.”

It highlights the central role for Library centric reading list solutions (Northumbria use Talis Aspire:
“Through our long-term partnership with faculty, our reading list service had achieved a critical mass of content and had become a key online destination for students, attracting a wide range of student learning activity in one place”.

The rise of library centric reading list systems.
By Ken Chad. Higher Education Library Technology (HELibTech) Briefing Paper no.5 . July 2018

The last five years have seen a sizable increase in the number of universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand deploying library centric reading lists solutions. A notable change in the last year or so is that library resource list solutions are beginning to be adopted in the US. The paper suggests that reading/resource list systems will have a major impact on the global library technology market just as library ‘discovery services’ did over a decade ago. The paper analyses the impact of reading list solutions on students, academics/faculty, the library and the library supply chain. It looks to future developments including the more extensive use of analytics and the increasing role of reading lists in pedagogical ‘scaffolding’.

Creating effective and interesting reading lists.

Edyta Krol University of West London Coffee Break Tips [blog] 2017

“Some recommendations, which can help make RL more interesting and effective in terms of developing students’ learning”

Defunct systems

LORLS (Loughborough University)LORLS (Loughborough Online Reading List System) is a reading list management system developed by the Systems Team at Loughborough University Library and made available as open source. Whilst the system is still available to download as open source it is no longer being actively developed by Loughborough and the University moved to Talis Aspire.

MyReading
'MyReading was a Computing & Library Services project to implement an online reading list system for the University of Huddersfield'.

Curriculum Builder (EBSCO) EBSCO Deprecating Curriculum Builder. 3 Oct 2023
we will be deprecating Curriculum Builder by the end of 2024.”

Telstar (Technology Enhanced Learning supporting STudents to achieve Academic Rigour) Open source solution developed by the Open University


EARL (Easy Access to Resource Lists)
York University (in house development as of 2013).York awarded a contact to ExLibris for the Leganto Reading List system March 2017

List8D (defunct)
'Open source reading list system.List8D was part of the Information Environment Programme funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). This project has ended and List8D has now been replaced at the university of Kent by the Talis Aspire reading list system'.

Learnbuild (defunct)
(appears to be dormant of defunct)


unilibri (defunct) unilibri was a new reading list management system launching in Semester 2 of the 2012/13 academic year.

reading_resource_lists.txt · Last modified: 2024/03/06 04:44 by paul