Introduction
This article will help you understand how importances work within Talis Aspire, why you will find them useful and how you can configure them to work best for your institution.
Setting Importances
When you are in list edit view, any bookmark on a list will show metadata about that item, as well as an importance. By default - ie when newly added - the importance will default to displaying as 'Importance not set'. For list publishers, this feature will display in red to indicate that an action can be taken here; student viewers will simply see a gap.
Clicking on the 'Importance not set' drop down will allow a list publisher to attach an importance to the item. The screenshot above shows five suggested options, but these can be altered to suit your University's preferred terminology (see 'Configuration').
Selecting an importance for an item can be very useful in guiding the reading of your student audience, particularly if you are working with a long list where students are not expected to view every item. For example, marking an item as ‘Essential’ will make it clear to the end user that this item really shouldn’t be missed when carrying out set reading.
Mandatory importances
To meet the needs of Universities who would prefer that the Importances feature was mandatory, it is possible for your institution to request that our mandatory importances feature is switched on for you. You can request this via a support ticket.
This means that whenever a user adds a new item to their reading list - either via My Bookmarks or via the extension (Create & Add to List option) - they will be forced to select an Importance before they are able to add an item to their list. As you will see in the screenshot below, the Importance field is marked as Required and the user will not be able to proceed with the bookmark until an importance is selected.
When a user hits the Publish button on a list which includes existing items without an importance, they will be prompted to Set Importances for those items (see screenshot below). However, they can bypass the option at this point by just clicking Publish.
Reviews
It’s not just the list users who can benefit from the use of importances. When a list is reviewed, the reviewer will also be able to see which importances have been set and can use this information to complete their review and purchasing decisions accordingly.
For example, your library may have a ratio for purchasing book titles which are marked as ‘Essential’, or a separate policy for ordering items which are marked as ‘Recommended’. You can use the filters in the Review screen to quickly focus on whichever group interests you and carry out the relevant actions.
You can also now change the importance of an individual item while reviewing a list. The importance is displayed beneath the item title, you just need to click the edit button next to that and then save.
Configuration
Institutions can update the importances they use at any time using the Settings area of Talis Aspire. More information is available in this article: Settings - Importances