Introduction:
Olivia Walsby, Reading List Services Manager, The University of Manchester Library
Contact: olivia.walsby@manchester.ac.uk
Q: What is the status of your implementation?
We went live to academic staff across the whole university in May 2019 and fully live to all students via the VLE at the beginning of Sept.
Q: What is the major benefit you hope to see as a result of your institution’s use of Leganto?
Leganto allows us to combine several existing Library services to simplify and streamline processes for teaching staff, and to combine all previous methods of requesting reading list items. As such, we hope to improve academic engagement with the service and system beyond that achieved previously. We also anticipate that students will benefit from enhanced resource provision and increased availability across all course units, as well as an improved experience when accessing their reading.
More broadly, implementing Leganto delivers on the Library’s Reading List Strategy, the result of a University-wide consultative project approved by senior leadership. It directly supports the University’s strategic goal to provide an outstanding learning and student experience.
Q: What do you see as the
major challenge you’ll encounter in getting your community of users to utilize
Leganto?
Time poor
academic staff will potentially view this as yet another administrative burden,
and yet another new system to learn to use. However, we hope that the resultant
time saving benefits of having a ‘one-stop shop’ for reading lists will
outweigh this, and that the simplicity of using the system as well as the
extensive support we have on offer, including online user guides and one-to-one
training sessions, will ease our colleagues through this change in processes.
Q: How will you measure
success?
As well as
positive anecdotal feedback from our staff and students, we hope to see an
increase in academic uptake of the system and service, an increase in the
number of current lists in the system and of course evidence of student usage
and engagement with their reading lists and reading list content.
Q: How can the user group best be of help to you?
With the large scale nature of our service relaunch, we are keen to ensure that our new workflows are as streamlined as possible, so we will be looking to share best practice and experiences with other institutions to ensure we are getting the most out of the system and that Leganto is being developed in a way that works for the UK HE community.
Q: How do you see Leganto contributing to the positioning of your library within your University?
Reading lists are a fundamental part of any programme and through our coherent institutional approach, establishing the Library reading list system as the central point of truth for reading lists at the University and facilitating implementation of our Reading List Strategy, we hope to secure our key role in providing an excellent student experience.