Introduction
This article discusses rollover for universities using the Talis Aspire integration with CLA's Digital Content Store (DCS).
There are two elements to consider for rollover:
- DCS requests are rolled over from year-to-year, creating new requests for your new cohort of students.
- Reading lists are also rolled over from time period to time period. The main reason for this is to ensure each cohort of students are accessing the appropriate version of their reading list related to the content they studied/are studying.
This article is set out in the following sections:
Talis Aspire syncing and rollover in DCS
Once you've rolled over in DCS, this will automatically sync with Talis Aspire Reading Lists (TARL) overnight, in the same way new requests are synced between the two systems. As with other DCS syncing you can also choose to manually sync the requests if you want to see these new requests in TARL sooner. Details of this manual process are explained more fully in Talis Aspire DCS Integration Updating Talis Aspire by Synchronisation.
To ensure the digitisation is displayed on the correct version of the reading list, you will need to identify and document the order in which you will be rolling over.
- Option 1 - Rollover in DCS before you rollover in TARL - during the sync process with DCS, TARL will identify that the DCS item has been rolled over and automatically create a rollover for this request in TARL. The newly created request will link to the existing reading list item linked from the old request. Once you rollover your reading lists the digitisation will appear on the new version of the list.
- Option 2 - Rollover in TARL before you rollover in DCS - during the sync process with DCS, TARL will identify that the DCS item has been rolled over and automatically create a rollover for this request in TARL. TARL sees that the reading list has been rolled over and tracks the item through to the new version of the reading list. This new item is then linked with the TARL request.
- Option 3 - Rollover in DCS only, no rollover in TARL - during the sync process with DCS, TARL will identify that the DCS item has been rolled over and automatically create a rollover for this request in TARL. TARL identifies that the reading list has not rolled over and will link the digitisations to the existing reading list items.
We strongly recommend you use the same rollover order in future years (ie. if this year you rolled over in DCS first, you continue to rollover in DCS before TARL).
For information on rolling over in TARL, read the following support article: Time period rollover in TARL.
Webinar recording of process (May 2021)
Frequently asked questions
Q - So if we don't rollover in Talis Aspire Reading Lists, we don't need to do anything to ensure the DCS requests display on the new lists?
A - Correct, in DCS rollover, when a new request which is created, the original ID goes into a field called 'previous request ID'. So during the synchronisation, this is what Talis Aspire uses as the trigger to synchronisation to the new request as we read the previous ID number. In this scenario, there is nothing to do in Talis Aspire.
Q - What are the main advantages and disadvantages of options 1 and 2?
A - There are no advantages to either option, it is the flexibility you have in order to make your lists available for editing ready for the new academic year at a point in time to suit the university workflows. The key is, whichever option you decide on this year, you should look to continue in that order in subsequent years. We recommend sharing with Talis the option you decide to take, via a support ticket so we can log this for future reference when you look at this in subsequent years. This is important because of how Talis Aspire does a trackback to the version of the list in use at that time, switching order could result in a digitisation becoming unlinked to the latest version of the list.
Q - Do we need to notify Talis when we are doing our DCS rollover?
A - Ideally yes, so we can check that the order of events replicate what's happened in previous years.
Q - We keep three years of reading lists available, what would happen to the previous year's lists and how would they link back to the DCS, would the link change?
A - Because we link directly to the bundle in DCS as the online resource link, which remains live, therefore the same digitisation should be displayed on all 3 years lists. As long as the bundle is live we believe the digitisation will be viewable for students on all of your lists.