How to make Talis Aspire Digitised Content (TADC) a success
Introduction
Purchasing Talis Aspire Digitised Content is only the beginning of the journey. The area’s outlined in this checklist are all contributors to incorporating digitisations into your institution’s teaching and learning and reading lists processes. Print this out and tick them off as you go.
Review objectives
- You had some aims and objectives that the purchase of TADC was designed to meet. Have you reviewed these now that you have had begun the rollout of your digitisation module?
Project Board
- Do you have a team of people who take responsibility for the way that copyright and the digitisation of material is managed at your institution?
- Do you meet regularly to discuss specific tasks that are contributing to your objectives and targets?
Rollout
- Get your academics and course administrators up to speed with requesting digitisations through Talis Aspire Reading Lists (TARL).
- Plan how you are going to reach out to specific schools, faculty or departments.
Consider where change is needed
- What can you do differently now that you have TADC?
- What can you do away with now you have TADC?
- What extra things can you do now that you have TADC?
- Have you considered using your scanning service as a way to help your acquisitions costs? Some universities are taking the route of scanning any chapter on a reading list so that the students have access and helps with not needing as many physical books in the library.
Awareness through integration
- Do students know how to access digitisations through their reading list?
- Do academics know where and how to raise requests and where to query any problems?
- Are you using LTI to embed your reading lists into the Learning Management System? To find out more about LTI see this article. Embedding your reading lists in your Learning Management System will mean students are accessing their module information alongside their reading list and digitisations.
Can academics just start playing?
- Have you asked Talis to turn on the "request digitisation" option for all list publishers?
- Are you going to have a policy whereby digitisation requests all have to come via a reading list?
Growing your service
- How do you plan on increasing the use of digitisations in reading lists?
Feedback and evaluate
- All the while that you are meeting with users using both TARL and TADC, are you gathering their feedback and using it to inform decision making?
British Library integration
- Have you setup the British Library integration so you can order scans direct?
Customisation
- Have you looked at the dictionary to see how you can customise the messages that academics are seeing while using the system? More information on the dictionary can be found here.
Routine
- Have you got a set of routine tasks that you aim to complete each year?
- Are you uploading your student numbers into TARL as part of your hierarchy and module
- update each year? More information on the hierarchy can be found here.
Staff Training
- Have you got a process in place for making sure that new and returning staff are introduced to TADC?
Rollover
- Have you a plan for how you want to use rollover in TADC to copy digitisations from year to year? (Remember you need to roll over TARL first!)
Ask if it is possible
- Have you asked the community for advice?
- Have you asked the Talis Services Team for advice?
So how many did you tick off?
If you want to know more about any of these checklist items, please contact us and we’ll be happy to either offer advice, or put you in touch with other customers who are already doing what you are trying to do