When adding structure to sometimes lengthy lists migrated from our previous system, tutors use the search function to find the item they wish to move to one of their sections. However, the 'cut' feature is then absent from the action menu meaning they cannot 'move' the item to the right place in the list; only 'copy' it via 'My Bookmarks'. This either means the original item is still floating in the unstructured portion of the list and has to be found again to be deleted, or the tutor has to remember to open the action menu a second time with the search filter still applied and select 'delete'.

I believe this is particularly problematic for items that have been digitised (we use the DCS integration) as diverting the item through the 'My Bookmarks' area and deleting the original entry breaks the linking and causes additional restorative work for our digitisation team.

The ability to search, cut then 'move' the item in one manoeuvre would also be more streamlined than the current options.

Moodle has a very useful feature whereby staff roles have the option to view Moodle pages as another role would see them (eg Student). While Aspire reading lists have Student View, it would be really helpful if those with the most-permissions roles (eg Library staff) could choose to view as if they only had the permissions of a lesser role (eg List Publisher).

We often find when attempting to help academic staff with Aspire that there is confusion about what those staff can or can't see on their screen, as Library staff with the Acquisitions role have more permissions and therefore more options on menus etc. It can also make creating Aspire guides with screenshots or videos tricky, as a member of Library staff can't make their menus look the same as those of an academic.

Could an option be created for Library Acquisitions staff to View As... list publisher, list creator, etc?

Moodle has a very useful feature whereby staff roles have the option to view Moodle pages as another role would see them (eg Student). While Aspire reading lists have Student View, it would be really helpful if those with the most-permissions roles (eg Library staff) could choose to view as if they only had the permissions of a lesser role (eg List Publisher).

We often find when attempting to help academic staff with Aspire that there is confusion about what those staff can or can't see on their screen, as Library staff with the Acquisitions role have more permissions and therefore more options on menus etc. It can also make creating Aspire guides with screenshots or videos tricky, as a member of Library staff can't make their menus look the same as those of an academic.

Could an option be created for Library Acquisitions staff to View As... list publisher, list creator, etc?

When academics order new titles for their resource list, we put an internal note to that effect in our order records and acquisitions add that title to the relevant Talis list once the books have arrived. Please can this action by the library trigger an automatic email to the list owner and list publishers to say that new items have been added to their list by the library and that they should add the necessary details to the new entry as needed? This would save so much time and we wouldn't need to send a separate email to those academics to let them know that items have been added to their Talis list.

Students taking online courses at our university have a core textbook for each module which is supplied by the course provider and not by our library.

As a result, the details of the core textbooks are kept at the top of their reading lists and in sections, in paragraph notes with a link to the course provider's VLE, rather than as standard bookmarks.

Students have reported that they would still like to use the reading intentions menu to indicate whether they have read, or are planning to read, their core textbooks, but this doesn't seem to be possible for paragraph notes.

We would like to see a feature built into Talis Aspire that would enable the system to run an accessibility check on items as they were being added to a reading list to determine whether the destination platform (e.g. an eBook site or journals database) is compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. If that were possible, we could train our list creators to choose accessible resources for their lists. Also, the existence of a tool like this would put some pressure on those resource providers whose platforms are not very accessible to make improvements, or else find their resources making fewer appearances on Aspire-powered reading lists.

Of course, third-party accessibility checkers are available and are used by a limited number of staff already, but an inbuilt tool could be rolled out much more widely because it would become an integral part of the list creation and editing process.

In the vast majority of referencing styles, "Edition" is only required where an item is a second or later edition.

However, the Metadata quality rating on reading list Analytics requires an edition statement for all books, whether they are single-edition or not. This is resulting in all single-edition or first edition books having red metadata flags even when their metadata is perfectly good and their Harvard (for example) reference entirely correct. If an academic or librarian inserted "1st edition" metadata into a bookmark, the reference generated would then be incorrect in most styles.

Unfortunately, since this would apply to so many items on our lists, it's another factor (along with the lack of counting VIEW ONLINE clicks) which means we don't promote Analytics to academics as it would be misleading/annoying.

Can the requirement for the Edition field be removed from the metadata rating?

We would like to propose that a filter is added to the MIS dashboards to allow running reports for a single academic year or time period. Currently filtering by academic year is only available on the "Edit Activity" dashboard.

We had high hopes for the new MIS dashboards, which offer graphical, easy to use reports. However, as things stand, we are unable to use them because many of the dashboards report on all unarchived lists within the system, rather than allowing filtering to the current academic year lists. As it is our current policy to retain the last 4 years of reading lists before archiving them, this means the data displayed covers multiple years making it less meaningful.

The ability to select a specific academic year/time period would provide greater flexibility and would benefit other institutions with similar policies on archiving.

Posted on behalf of staff at: University of Nottingham

We would like to be able to set a priority level for lists sent for review and then be able to filter/sort the reviews in priority order. Ideally the priority levels could be configurable (e.g. High, Medium, Low or Priority 1, Priority 2) for each institution, similar to review stages.

Aspire reviews are currently based on a steady stream of reading lists, dealt with in order of the date/time requested, with no other sort options. In practice when there is high demand before the start of semesters, it is important that reviews can be prioritised according to other criteria (e.g. school, semester, number of students). This allows us to try to meet the highest/urgent need first.

Because we can’t record priority in reviews, we have to prioritise and schedule reviews outside of Aspire. This means staff need to check multiple systems/documents in order to manage and monitor reviews. This enhancement would improve efficiency and significantly help with our workflows at peak times.

We hope the ability to prioritise lists for review may be of interest to other universities when dealing with large numbers of lists at busy times.

Posted on behalf of staff at: University of Nottingham

The bulk action tools produced by Joe Munzer at York St John University under the aegis of Talis Developer Network have been absolutely invaluable during the last year - thanks Joe! However, my colleagues and I have had some difficulties getting the tool set up on our work computers because they are Managed Desktop machines and not really intended to run applications like Docker and XAMPP, which are needed to use Joe's bulk tools. Ideally, we would like to see the functionality of bulk tools could be incorporated into Aspire 'Admin' menu or even added as a separate 'Actions' menu to prevent them becoming too long. This would make it possible for staff who don't have admin rights to their work computer - which I anticipate is a majority of HE librarians - to bulk-add items to lists, replace URLs, and all the other great features that we've come to rely on. Anecdotally, I know that quite a few people are having to use their personal machines to make changes to institutional reading lists, which isn't really OK.

Would anyone else like this to happen as well? Please vote generously if so!