NERS Ballot:
Thanks to everyone in the Leganto community who participated in our 2020 NERS enhancement cycle. This year, we ran 2 rounds of voting, with strong member participation across regions in both rounds.
The 2nd and final ballot included 14 enhancements. The top 11 enhancements were accepted for development by Ex Libris and placed on the Leganto roadmap to be developed this calendar year:
Leganto webinar: How to prepare for the next term at a time of uncertainty:
On 17th June 2020, Angela Laurins from the University of Edinburgh and Tamar Sadeh, Ex Libris VP, Teaching and Learning Solutions delivered a Leganto webinar, How to prepare for the next term at a time of uncertainty. 285 customers representing all EMEA countries registered for the webinar with 134 people joining the webinar live.
Angela provided some background on the University of Edinburgh’s Resource List service and the end to end Leganto/Alma workflow in use to manage purchases and digitisation requests for teaching before describing the changes the Library teams have had to make to policy and processes in response to Covid-19 and the uncertainty it has caused. As in many other universities, Leganto has a key role to play in supporting the transition to online teaching. Angela highlighted the move away from managing print resources to focus on delivering Essential course reading online via Leganto and described how Edinburgh is making use of Leganto tags to highlight online availability to students.
Tamar then demonstrated how Leganto can be used to support online, hybrid and on campus teaching and highlighted key features in Alma and Leganto that libraries can use to identify gaps in digital content and to help develop and diversify collections. Tamar also spoke about lecturers adapting and using new technologies to deliver a good online learning experience for students and again highlighted how Leganto can support this.
A recording of the webinar is available: How to prepare for the next term at a time of uncertainty
Spotlight on Leganto at the University of Sheffield:
Deborah A Taylor, Teaching Development Librarian, University of Sheffield
The move to remote learning and teaching has thrown a spotlight on Leganto at the University of Sheffield.
Following the library closure in March, there was a need to ensure that the library continued to support students with their semester two studies when they returned after the Easter break. Library staff reviewed the semester two and year-long resource lists and purchased electronic content for all items on the list, rather than only for materials highlighted as key reading which would be the usual process.
The benefits to students of accessible, well-structured resource lists have been brought to the fore by Covid-19, and academic staff have been encouraged through “all-staff” emails to create resource lists if they didn’t already have one. The library’s online resource list guidance has been developed to provide clearer instructions to staff who want to use Leganto, including new sections that offer best practice tips and explain the benefits of resource lists to students and academic staff. Our first “getting started with reading lists” webinar since lockdown will take place today and more than 30 people have registered to attend.
Next steps – due to uncertainties about when the University will fully reopen, the library has started to replace print for electronic materials on the semester one resource lists. Throughout the summer faculty librarians will promote the benefits of Leganto to academic staff. Leganto analytics have always been available to us but are now being communicated more effectively throughout the library to ensure the momentum towards academic engagement and enhanced student experience continues.
submitted by: Angela Laurins