‘Tribute to Roger Ebert’ by get directly down

Our colleagues in Digital Eduction have recently been working on updating the UCL E-Learning Baseline.

The e-learning Baseline is now included in the Academic Manual, and offers a best practice template for taught courses at UCL, setting out the minimum expectations of a module.  One of the drivers is to support students who need consistent and clear information on their module, readings and assessments.

The baseline includes a requirement to have a reading list for students and recommends ReadingLists@UCL; it also clarifies that UCL policy is to have reading materials available for students 48 hours before teaching (both in section 5: Resources).

Providing consistency across programmes, and clarity of what reading is required, is one of the most positive feedback messages we have had from students about ReadingLists@UCL.  For some modules their reading requirements are spread over a handbook, with sometimes different or additional information in Moodle, and by email: having one consistent place to check makes their life much easier.  This also helps the library ensure books and journals are provided in time, and can translate into good feedback for your module.

Though reading lists themselves don’t have a baseline, we do run ‘Best practice’ sessions for academics.

In a Best Practice Reading Lists session last year we spoke to teaching staff in the Engineering department about recent research around how students use reading lists, and what potential barriers they find in understanding what is required of them, or accessing their essential readings in time.  All barriers are very simple to overcome, for example by using the controlled language provided by the ‘Essential’ ‘Optional’ tags on each reading; and dividing the list into sections by topic or by week needed.  Enriching your list with personal annotations really helps students understand whether you are pointing to a few readings that could be useful, or a seminal text they can’t get by without.  Some academics even like to point to readings they don’t believe have very good arguments, or are based in another library to oblige the student visit another institution: this is also helpful to make clear!

This is the Best Practice reading list of a very few resources used during our session.

Would you like a similar session for your department, or a quick 1:1 to look at your module?  Or would you find a baseline for reading lists a helpful guide?  You can reach us by email, or call or visit the TLS.

Ovid is a large database which provides access to many journals, books and some audio-visual resources.  If you need to bookmark a journal article from here you will find the link is not stable: when you return to the reading the link may not work – and therefore is not helpful to your students.

The easy solution

Make a basic bookmark and the library will turn this into a stable link for you:

• Bookmark the page as usual: in Ovid, this works beautifully so all the bibliographic data will pull through nicely.
• Use the ‘Library note’ to flag that the link needs upgrading.
• When you have completed your reading list, click ‘Request review’.  TLS will be notified to check your list and we will update the link to a stable link.

How is this done?

A surprising number of academics, learning technologists and librarians ask how they can do this themselves, so the following is for them:

• Navigate to the article
• First click on ‘Email jumpstart’ and from the popup box, copy the jumpstart URL (click on the image below for the screenshot)
• Then bookmark as usual from the article, but replace the ‘Weblink’ with the ‘jumpstart’ URL.

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

PEP-Web is a database for Psychoanalytic resources (books, journals, video etc.).   It used to be a little more tricky to bookmark from however when this was flagged to Talis, the software owners behind ReadingLists@UCL, they were able to create a fix so the two systems now interact well.

When you search through the library catalogue for a journal, and click ‘View online’ you

Different journal providers

may be offered more than one journal provider:

PEP-Web has a good archive back to the 1920s and is very specialist, so it may be the only source for some readings. From this screen click on ‘Go’ and then navigate to the relevant reading.

Journal articles in PEP-Web do not have a DOI however the online reading list system will create a good bookmark despite this.

• Click on your ‘Add to my bookmarks’ button as usual and the correct bibliographic data will be pulled through into the bookmark.
• The weblink is also stable, so you need do nothing more than save the bookmark into a particular reading list!

If you are aware of any databases or resources that don’t bookmark well, please let us know so we can work with Talis to solve this.

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

Harvard Business Review articles are often key resources for students across UCL, particularly in the UCL School of Management.

UCL Library subscribes to this resource online, making it readily available to students.  It is available through the EBSCOhost platform. However academics wishing to direct students to readings will find that technical measures inhibit them from creating a durable link to an article.  This is to reinforce the licence terms which do not allow academic institutions to use HBR material in ‘electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources.’.

How to help students to key readings, whilst still respecting the licence restrictions?  You can signal to students which readings are interesting to read, and the library will turn this into a permitted link at the most granular level allowed.

• Bookmark the page as usual, so enough of the bibliographic detail is saved to be clear which reading you are recommending. Even more helpful, add the ‘Accession number’ from the article into the student or library note.
• Use the ‘Library note’ to flag that this is an HBR link which needs upgrading.
• When you have completed your reading list, click ‘Request review’.  TLS will be notified to check your list and we will update the link to a stable link, from where students can reasonably click to search for the relevant article.

For help with bookmarking from other specialist resources, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking‘. Or, of course, do get in touch any time.

Many academics encourage students to research more widely or use libraries beyond UCL.  If you wish to add a book to an online reading list that is not in UCL’s Explore catalogue, COPAC is a useful alternative.  It is a union catalogue, searching 90+ UK library catalogues including the British Library, University libraries and specialist research libraries.  Most teaching staff prefer this to a commercial alternative, such as Amazon or online bookshops.

Bookmarking from COPAC is slightly different.  Start as usual:

• Navigate to the title of the relevant item
• click on the ‘Add to My Bookmarks’ button

At this point, instead of turning into the bookmarking screen, you will see a new link called ‘Bookmark to reading list’ appear to the right of the bibliographic information, under the locations details (see below):

• click on this ‘Bookmark to reading list’ link to bookmark the item as usual (ignore the contents of the screen on the right).
• check the item links correctly from the reading list.

This has been a frequent question this week – even from one of our ReadingLists@UCL team!

For other FAQs on non-standard bookmarking, look to the tag cloud on the right of this page and select ‘non-standard bookmarking’