Leganto News in Brief – Feb 2021
NERS- extended deadline
Due to the busy start to the year, the ELUNA and IGeLU Leganto Working Groups have decided to extend the NERS submission deadline until the 13th February. This deadline now aligns with the Alma and Primo NERS submission dates.
Please take advantage of the extra two weeks to submit your requests at https://ners.igelu.org using your institution’s IGeLU or ELUNA organization ID and password. Please include an indication of the perceived impact of the enhancement, and add any use cases which help address why the enhancement is needed.
Before submitting your feature request, you should search the NERS system for duplicate requests.
The Leganto Product Working Group will review all requests before the first round of voting. Requests will then be passed to Ex Libris to assign complexity points to the top requests. If necessary, a second round of voting will take place before the enhancements to take forward into development are agreed.
Leganto self-activation at the Vienna University of Economics and Business
Veronika Leitner, Systems Librarian, Vienna University of Economics and Business
The Vienna University of Economics and Business went live with Leganto (https://readit.wu.ac.at ) in January 2020, making us the first university in Austria to adopt it. After a Covid-19-prolonged soft launch we made our first ever reading list management tool available university-wide via (optional) self-activation in January 2021.
Instructors can now easily say ‘Yes!’ to Leganto by flicking a switch in our learn management systems’ admin menu. You can see how this looks like on our support page: https://learn.wu.ac.at/open/fit4research/en/readit_listenerstellerinnen#first_steps .
In the background the processes are of course more complex, especially as we do not use a standard platform like Moodle or Blackboard, but LEARN, a custom system based on the learn management system .LRN and the OpenACS toolkit (both open source). Leganto itself is incorporated through the LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) protocol.
To make self-activation possible it was necessary to build new routines, foremost the daily synchronization of all staff users from the university’s personnel database with Alma to ensure that there are user records with the instructor role for all instructors and administrative staff.
Activation changes the literature section of the courses’ syllabus to Leganto while in Alma the course is created via the API, retrieving all necessary data from the LMS (i.e., course code, title, term, participants, instructors, etc.). Course data is synced daily to keep on top of all occurring changes.
At the same time a blank reading list is generated and named identical to the course. This ensures lists are associated with courses and reduces student confusion caused by non-descriptive or overgeneralized names.
Currently, instructors can still switch back and forth between the old way of adding learning materials (text entered into a form) and Leganto but for the winter term 2021/22 we plan to have Leganto activated by default.
We are working on a roll-over feature via the Courses API, too. Here we are faced with a challenge as the API does not keep sections in their original order and sections without citations are inaccessible, but we are confident that we will find a solution for this, too.
Campus Engagement Manager Sara Belotti introduces herself
Ciao!
My name is Sara Belotti and I am the new Campus Engagement Manager for Leganto in the EMEA region. As Campus Engagement Manager, I work with sites to develop strategic outreach plans and initiatives. In addition to this, I share best practices as well as resources created by Ex Libris and customers to ensure the successful adoption of Leganto along the way.
I am currently in the process of contacting all my 60 customers, focusing on getting to know their specific needs and offering support. For example, I am helping Italian customers to resolve some of their technical issues, putting them in contact with EX Libris experts, and making sure they make the best of Leganto. I am also supporting them with specific initiatives that they are putting in place to expand teachers’ engagement in their institutions.
Another aspect of my role is to connect customers in my region and around the world, to share best practices and success stories. Please, reach out to me if you believe I can help you in any way. I am based in the UK and my email address is sara.belotti@exlibrisgroup.com