Traffic Cones by Natesh Ramasamy

From Monday 31st July 3pm – Thursday 3rd August 9am, there will be some disruption to ReadingLists@UCL.

Aleph, the Library Management System behind UCL’s Explore catalogue, is having its server moved as part of the ongoing ISD datacentre migration. This will mean a necessary outage of the library catalogue.

This affects online reading lists in two ways:

• For students: existing readings won’t have their live ‘Availability’ on display: you won’t be able to see whether the texts are on the shelf or out on loan.  The shelfmark, however will remain on display (see screenshot below).
• For UCL staff: you won’t be able to bookmark new readings from Explore.

Bookmarking from e-resources such as e-journal articles and e-books are unaffected.  You can also bookmark from COPAC, though its information is not live; bookmarking from COPAC has an extra step.  And of course do get in touch with the ReadingLists@UCL team if you need any help.

Read more information on the Aleph server move and how it affects all UCL Library services.

Library Availability

The online reading lists have rolled over succesfully, creating copies of all lists ready for the 2017-18 session.  The reading lists for 2016-17 have been archived.

A timely question today from a UCL medical department.  Having seen that the online reading lists will roll over on Tuesday 17th July, they ask ‘when my reading list becomes a 2017-18 list, will the digitised readings on it also roll forward and remain available?’.

‘Readings’ by Ben Terrett CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

All online reading lists roll forward and have a new version for 2017-18 created. If a department lets us know a module isn’t running we will archive the list so it isn’t visible for the coming year.

When lists roll forward, any readings that the library has digitised will also roll forward and remain available. The majority of these readings are digitised using the CLA licence. These have a little auto-check as occasionally rights holders withdraw from the licence, however we find that almost all readings are fine to re-use the next year.

Just a few readings will not be available by virtue of having individual copyright permission requested. The TLS team will need to re-request the copyright permission if the readings are to be used again in the coming year.  We email the academic or list owner for confirmation that they would like to re-use the same readings for next year:

• If they are required then we re-request the copyright permission and the department covers any fees incurred, as usual.
• If the readings are not needed, or if there is no reply from the department or tutor, then unfortunately we will have to remove the reading from the reading list as it won’t be covered by any permission for that year.

Our course readings webpage has more information on digitising readings under the CLA licence and how we request copyright permission.  Please do get in touch if you have any questions!

Alas no, as this would not comply with copyright regulations, but there may be selected extracts and contents pages available which is still really, really useful!

The Preview automatically links to Google Books and pulls in text from there, so is only available for some books.  Do be aware that the preview could be removed by Google at any time!

If the chapter you need is not available from the preview, which I know is very frustrating, you can always enquire about the possibility of digitisation from Teaching and Learning Services (TLS), who are happy to assist you.  We use UCL’s copyright licences to make copyright compliant copies for teaching with.

The example below shows how the preview is displayed in an online reading list: you can use the search box, and arrow buttons to navigate through the preview. Happy previewing!

Summer reading

In TLS we are preparing for the annual ‘rollover’ of ReadingLists@UCL.

This is the final task of the academic year for us: the CLA report of UCL’s digitised readings was sent in June, the majority of teaching has finished, and the exam period too has ended.

Each summer the reading lists have a new copy made for the September term, much like the Moodle snapshot.  This year the rollover is scheduled for Tuesday 18th July 2017.  In brief:

• Reading lists for 2016-17 will have an exact copy made for 2017-18, which will publish immediately
• Students and staff will have continuous access to their reading lists
  
• Editing rights remain constant, so academics and teaching support staff are able to edit the new lists straight away
• The old version of the reading list (2016-17) will archive, which means it will disappear from public view but can be found and re-used in future years if needed
• Existing 2017-18 lists will be totally unaffected.

Please note:

• Unpublished changes will not be copied onto the new list: please publish your lists before 18th July if you wish the changes to be carried forward.
• If you would like reading lists removed – for example if a course is no longer being taught – please email us any time
• Similarly, if any courses have updated titles or course codes, email us to request the details are updated.

Do you need a refresher on how to edit and manage your lists?  Drop in to our office in Senate House on Wednesday afternoons, 2.30 – 4.30pm for a quick session. The ReadingLists@UCL webpages also have guides, FAQs and contact details.