The rollover was requested to start on Tuesday 17th July, however you will have noticed the 2017-18 lists remain on display.

The Talis team identified an issue relating to student numbers so paused the rollover: they updated us on Wednesday 18th with the news that they are testing the fix they have created and will re-start the rollover when they are confident there are no issues.  So sorry for this delay!  You can contine to edit your 2017-18 lists as usual, but please publish your changes as you work, to make sure they are saved.

New 2018-19 reading lists do not roll over and can be used as usual.

‘Perfect Gwith Barrels’ by Philip Male

In TLS we are preparing for the annual ‘rollover’ of ReadingLists@UCL. This is our final task of the academic year: the CLA report of UCL’s digitised readings was sent in June, the majority of teaching has finished, and the exam period too is largely over.

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 the evening of Tuesday 17th July 2018.  From about 5pm that day:

• Reading lists for 2017-18 will have an exact copy made for 2018-19, which will publish immediately
• The old version (2017-18) will archive, which means it will disappear from public view but can be found and re-used in future years if needed
• Students will 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 2018-19 will be unaffected by the rollover

Please note:

• Unpublished changes will not copy forward into the new list: please publish your lists before 17th July if you wish your updates to be carried forward.
• We suggest you stop editing reading lists before 5pm on 17^th July, and continue editing when you can see it has the 2018-19 date stamp – certainly from the morning of 18^th July, if not sooner.
• TLS are aware of the new module codes being introduced and will begin updating the reading list module codes from around 19^th July.  More details in our blog post on this.
• To have old courses archived, new lists set up, or current module names amended, please email us your requests!

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.  You could walk away with a new list set up and ready to go, get guidance on how to link to non-standard resources, or find out how to embed reading lists in Moodle.

The ReadingLists@UCL webpages also have guides, FAQs and contact details.

Traffic Cones!!! by Natesh Ramasamy

Today an academic alerted us to a problem with a small number of the course readings we make available through our Course Readings service. These readings are digitised by the library under the CLA licence, and made available as a link on the online reading lists.

In January we migrated all course readings to be hosted by the CLA Content Store, enabling us to benefit from the large number of digitised readings already available from other Universities – which reduces the amount of scanning needed from departments.

However a small number of readings remained on the UCL server where we originally stored them.  These weren’t updated for various reasons, such as: links to digitised readings were copied from one list to another without notifying the TLS to re-check them; students were being directed to archived lists; the lists and readings were used in years previous to 2015-16 but had not been updated.

What are we doing to solve the issue?  We ran a report of all readings across all 2017-18 reading lists and identified those with the older style link.  The TLS team ‘copyright checkers’ are checking the readings still fall under the CLA licence and completing our compliance adminstration.  The TLS ‘digitising and lists’ team are updating each link in the online reading list.  We are prioritising first those lists we have been told are in use, and then those modules which are running in 2017-18 according to Portico.  For those lists not running this year, we will be in touch with the department to ask if the readings will be needed at a future date.

Please note: if you have copied any links to add to Moodle or other places, we won’t be able to update these as we only have access to the online reading lists. Let us know if you find any broken links and we will create a working URL for your online reading list.

If you have used the ‘Request review’ option on your reading list in the past year, we will have auotmatically double-checked the links on your reading list.

If you have any questions, please email, or call the TLS team on 020 3549 5729 (internal x65729).

The question we are asked most often by teaching staff is why not just use Moodle for providing links and pdfs to readings?  Today’s case study shows one student’s experience of this.

Easy access for students?

A student contacted the library e-resources team as she had difficulty accessing an article online.  Her Moodle course is well organised and gives key readings with some great context and reading notes.  Several of the readings, however, led to an error page instead of the online article.

This is happening for two reasons.  The URL for the reading was copied and pasted directly from the web address bar.  For some resources, such as OVID, the web address contains session information or search terms: it is not a stable link.  When re-visited later, the link no longer works.

A second problem is that even if a stable link is used, it does not include the information which prompts students to log in with their UCL details.

In the majority of cases, both these issues can be resolved by bookmarking from ReadingLists@UCL in the recommended way – using a bookmarking button, much like Pinterest or del.icio.us.  When you first set up a list we will offer a quick orientation to show you how to do this.

For a handful of specialist databases, bookmarking requires an extra step. You can ‘Request review’ when your list is complete, and TLS will check and amend links for you; or ask TLS to create the bookmarks for you.  For those who prefer to be self-sufficient we have some guides: in the tag cloud to the right, click on ‘Non-standard bookmarking‘.

How can this situation be avoided on your course?

• Set up an online reading list and have a brief orientation with TLS
• Switch on the ‘Library Resources’ block to make a stable link from Moodle to the online list
• Let your students know about the online reading list!
• Remove any articles from Moodle to avoid duplication of work, and confusion for students

You may have noticed that a new Explore user interface (UI) has been soft-launched and is in a development phase for user testing.

When adding new readings into an online reading list however, please continue to use the classic Explore interface.  ReadingLists@UCL can only interact with one catalogue interface, so until the new UI has been formally launched, the reading lists will continue to interact best with the classic Explore interface.

Click to enlarge

We will post an update on this blog, and on the ReadingLists@UCL homepage message, when the switch has been made to the new UI.

Do contact the TLS team if you have concerns or questions.

Cones–Endless cones by Rusty Clark

On Monday August 14th 9am – 3pm there will be some disruption to ReadingLists@UCL.

This is the final step in an ISD datacentre migration.  The project is to move the server of the Library Management System, which powers UCL’s Explore catalogue. This will mean a necessary outage of the library catalogue.

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

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 books are on the shelf or out on loan.  The shelfmark, however will remain on display.
• 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 will be unaffected.

The TLS team are here as ever to help and answer questions, so don’t hesitate to get in touch.

The ISD server migration work is complete and ReadingLists@UCL has returned to full function.  Thank you for your patience during this time.

You can now bookmark books from the library catalogue, Explore, as usual.  Readings on your lists will display the library shelfmark and how many copies are on the shelf, as usual.

The TLS team will run a report of all readings bookmarked in the past three days to check they are linking to the catalogue correctly.

If you have any queries about your reading lists, please get in touch with us!

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

For those who manage online reading lists, you will be familiar with the ‘Bookmark button’. It sits in your web browser to click on whenever you see an article, programme or other resource to save into an online reading list – or for later reading.

The increase in websites moving from http to https has caused some problems for bookmarking in certain browsers, or particular versions of browsers. Whilst http websites still bookmark as usual, those beginning https don’t work as well; the current work-around to resolve this involves removing security certificates, which rather impedes the ease of working with reading lists!

Therefore, in the week beginning 19^th January the bookmarking button software will be updated. After the upgrade, the next time you use the button, you will be prompted to update it. This step will be easy to complete, but if you run into any difficulties just get in touch with the TLSS and we will help out, or do it for you.

And for those yet to set themselves up with an online reading list… request a reading list to be set up for your course and you could be adding readings for your students by the end of the day!

ReadingLists@UCL is supported by the TLSS (Teaching & Learning Support Section) of UCL Library Services.

Telephone: 020 7679 2087 (internal ext. 32087) or email us.