Update on digitised readings

By Pamela Clarke, on 20 November 2025

Due to yesterday’s Cloudflare outage, links to CLA digitised readings via readinglists@ucl were temporarily unavailable.

new TLS owl postcard

TLS has liaised with the CLA, and they have confirmed that a resolution to this issue has been found and a fix deployed.
However, if you continue to experience problems, do get in touch with us at readinglists@ucl.ac.uk and we will contact the CLA on your behalf.

Update on Moodle problems using the reading list LT1.3 embedding tool

By Pamela Clarke, on 18 November 2025

You may have noticed some problems with the Moodle integration tool that allows you to embed sections of your reading list in Moodle.

For the last couple of days, this has not been working and produced an error message for users when attempting to embed a section from readinglists@ucl

I’m pleased to say this has now been resolved. However, there may be further temporary issues when the global Cloudflare outage (another technical issue that is affecting webpages) is fully resolved, as additional changes might be required.

readinglist@ucl embed tool in Moodle

We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and appreciate your patience.

If you continue to experience problems, please do get in touch with us at readinglists@ucl.ac.uk

New Talis bookmarking workflow

By Pamela Clarke, on 30 October 2025

Heads up! Talis is rolling out a brand-new bookmarking workflow for all users starting Monday, 3rd November 2025.

New owl postcard

It’s faster, and hopefully easier to use, and designed to enhance your bookmarking experience. The old “classic” workflow will still be around until early January 2026, and is available from the preview screen, but we recommend switching over now to get familiar with the new setup.

Want to see it in action? We’ve updated our reading lists libguides to reflect these new changes :
https://library-guides.ucl.ac.uk/readinglists/using-bookmarking-button#s-lg-box-wrapper-19823317

What’s new compared to Classic ?

readinglists@ucl preview page of new bookmarking workflow

Some differences :

• Preview Screen Upgrade: Once you have clicked on the bookmarking button, you will be taken to a  preview screen showing all metadata side-by-side. No more scrolling like in Classic.
• One-Click Bookmarking: No need to choose between “Create” or “Create and Add to List.” Just hit “Save to MyBookmarks”—it does both! You’ll still use follow-up screens to add notes, choose a list, and set item position.
• Metadata Capture: For electronic resources, the preview screen now shows key details like DOI, URL, and view online links on the preview screen.
• Editing an item: If metadata is missing, click “Edit” to update or enrich it. The new screen offers extra fields on the top right that you can use to amend the metadata.  In Classic, you had to use a dropdown menu.

If you have any problems using the new bookmarking workflow, please do get in touch with readinglists@ucl.ac.uk 

OR  use the feedback button from the top menu on the readinglist@ucl home page

readinglists@ucl Homepage feedback button

New updated reading list webpages for students!

By Pamela Clarke, on 29 October 2025

We’ve revamped the reading list student web pages to make it easier for students to find the information they need regarding readinglists@ucl.

mortarboards

New owl postcard

From the pages students can discover how to :

• Find their list and navigate through the reading list with ease
• Make personal notes and track their reading intentions (these will only be visible to the student)
• Export lists using various citation styles
• Report broken links
• Get further information from our handy FAQs

Whether students are diving into their first module or preparing their first essay, readinglists@ucl is designed to support the student journey.

We welcome students to check it out to make the most of their reading experience!

If you experience any issues when using your reading list, please contact readinglists@ucl.ac.uk

Be Copyright wise and use your online reading list

By Pamela Clarke, on 22 October 2025

Students, ever wondered how to stay on the right side of copyright while diving into your course readings? We’ve got just the thing for you and it’s way more fun than it sounds!

Save the Date:

Tuesday 25th November

Just outside the IoE Library
11am – 2pm

Colin the Copyright Nerd

Swing by for a morning  of copyright wisdom, sweet treats, and a chance to win big! Meet the one and only “ Colin the Copyright Nerd”,  yes he’s real, well, to be more precise he’s not, he’s AI  generated, but he’s here to help you unravel the mysteries of copyright. Come and play the  “Copyright for Humans” game and see if you can become the wise owl of copyright !

Owl postcard for readinglists@ucl

Got thoughts on your online reading list? We want to hear them! Take our quick online survey and help us make your experience of using your reading lists even better.

And because we love to spoil you, we have :

• £25 Loveshop vouchers up for grabs
  

  Loveshop_voucher

• Lollipops and chocolate for everyone
• A whole lot of copyright and reading list fun!

So come for the treats, and leave a little wiser about copyright and your online reading lists. What more could you ask for?

Student reading list collaboration

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 25 July 2025

Accessibility for course readings

By Hazel M Ingrey, on 25 July 2025

The ReadingLists@UCL team continues to work closely with Library and central UCL Accessibility teams to harmonise our services for students and staff. We have now drawn together and formalised our offering.

In addition to our ReadingLists@UCL Guide ‘Supporting Print Disabled Students’ aimed at teaching staff, we have recently offered a permanent ‘Moodle Healthcheck’.  Previously limited to summer projects, we now support teaching staff year round to review a Moodle course – sometimes inherited and in need of a review – to identify which course readings are not accessible, and help address this.

This spring we joined with an Arts and Humanities faculty project, along with Learning Technologists and other librarians, and helped reviewed six Moodle modules.  The Learning Technologists led on accessible documents (handbooks, PowerPoints etc.) and we identified course readings that were inaccessible.  We either added a compliant version of the reading to an online reading list, or helped OCR and update the document to make it more accessible within Moodle.  On reading lists we link to UCL subscribed resources where possible, to ensure readings are also copyright compliant.

The Exam Papers service and course readings digitised under the CLA licence, all adhere to a baseline standard of accessibility so they are screen readable as standard.

Reading list rollover for 2025 is now complete

By Pamela Clarke, on 9 July 2025

The rollover for 2025 is complete! All your 2024-25 reading lists have been archived and a new copy has been created for 2025-26, which you can edit straight away.

If modules are not running this year, please let us know so we can archive the list. This hides it from view to avoid confusion and also saves it for future re-use.

Over the summer you can prepare your reading lists for the new academic year. You just need to review, edit and publish!

Pile of books with front edge displayed – ©Farther Along licensed CC BY 2.0

Do my digitised readings also roll forward  ? 

When your new list is created, the digitised readings (digitised under the CLA licence and added to your list by the TLS team) also copy forward.  There is a separate, behind-the-scenes process in July/August where the readings are re-checked automatically for the coming year. If your module is not running let us know so we can archive the digitised readings, ready for another year.

Reading List Rollover 2025

By Pamela Clarke, on 30 May 2025

Every summer, Teaching and Learning Services (TLS)  rollover reading lists and have a new copy made for the new academic year, much like the Moodle snapshot. This year, we will rollover on the evening of  Tuesday 8^th July 2025 from about 5pm.

Owl bookmark

Reading lists for 2024-25 will have an exact copy made for 2025-26, which will publish immediately.

• The old version (2024-25) will archive, which means it will disappear from public view but can be found and re-used in future years if needed.
• Students will still have continuous access to their reading lists: there is no down time for viewing lists.
• Editing rights remain constant, so list editors are able to edit the new lists as soon as they appear.
• Lists already set up as 2025-2026 will be unaffected by the rollover.

Please note

• Unpublished changes will not copy forward into the new list: please publish your lists before 5pm on the 8^th July if you wish your updates to be carried forward, or we can do this for you. Just email us using the details provided below.
• We suggest you stop editing reading lists before 5pm on 8^th July, and continue editing when you can see it has the 2025-26 date stamp – certainly from the next morning Wednesday 9th July 2025, if not sooner.
• The Moodle ‘Library resources’ block needs no maintenance and will continue to link to the most recent year’s list.   If you have been using the new LTI.3 reading list integration tool, you should not be required to re-link items. However, do get in touch if you experience any problems.
• To have old courses archived, new lists set up, or current module names amended, email us your requests!

If you are aware of students who may need access to the 2024-25 version of the lists, they can do any of the following :

• take a copy of the list by using the ‘View & Export’ button – before 5pm on 8th July
• save the URL of the list, which will continue to work even after the list is archived
• let us know that it needs to be revived if it has already been archived, and we will make it available for the student

Support

Do you need a refresher on how to edit and manage your lists?  TLS can provide training on readinglists@ucl via Teams or face-to-face, whichever you prefer.  We also have online quick guides, videos and FAQs on the ReadingLists@UCL Libguides.  FAQs and a link to the guides are also available from the ReadingLists@UCL webpages

Get in touch and you could walk away with a new list set up and ready to go, linked via the Library Resources block in Moodle !

New Resource Types and Metadata Fields are available to select for your online reading list

By Pamela Clarke, on 3 April 2025

Did you know that you can utilise other resources types to enrich the metadata on your online reading list ?

Talis (the reading list software provider) have enabled four new resource types : Database, Newspaper, Object and Report. Here is how you can use them –

Bookmark the item as usual, and if you need to change the resource type, click on the drop down under resource type –

Resource type drop down arrow

Once you click the drop down arrow, you can then see the new options :

New Talis resource types

Select the resource type you want, and continue to bookmark as usual.

In addition to the new resource types, there are also 6 new additional metadata fields which you can add to bookmarks. These are:

• Format
• Number
• Identifier
• Series
• Location
• Court

Additional fields options

If you feel there is a resource type or additional field that you would like added as options, please let us know and we will raise this with Talis.