Thinking through Library Review: Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review at Nottingham Trent University...
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27/06/22 1 Enhancing life-long learning, teaching and research through information resources and services
description
Thinking through Library Review: Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review at Nottingham Trent University (Dorothy Atherton, John Harral and Helen Adey, Nottingham Trent University) This session will describe the evolution of list review workflows at Nottingham Trent, covering the early days of Excel spreadsheets, the origins of the concept of Stages, the challenges of workflow change management and NTU's initial findings from trialling the new software. There will be a short demonstration of the functionality of Stages followed by NTU's current thinking on ways to enhance and improve the List review process.
Transcript of Thinking through Library Review: Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review at Nottingham Trent University...
13 April 2023 1
Enhancing life-long learning, teaching and research through information resources and services
13 April 2023 2
Dorothy Atherton, Services Manager - Resource Acquisitions and Supply
John Harral, Senior Library Assistant - Monograph Acquisitions
Helen Adey, Resource Acquisitions and Supply Team Manager
Thinking through Library Review:Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review at Nottingham Trent
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In the beginning………..• RLMS rolled out in August 2010
• Carrot and stick approach to ensure academic engagement
• Single route for recommending items for acquisition
• Management of process– Behind scenes workflows which would encompass all processes– Each step involved a different team and a different process– NO tracking, audit log, workflow within Talis Aspire
• Choice – radical change to process or adapt?
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Each of our lists had to go on a journey:
ALT
• Sanity Check
• Mark up exceptions
• Mark up items for attention of correct team
Acquisitions Team
• Look for e-availability
• Purchase appropriate format and quantity
• Update RLMS and LMS in parallel
Digitisation Team
• Transfer details to PackTracker
• Begin Processing
• Edit RLMS
Link Checking Team
• Improve quality of descriptive metadata
• Update electronic links to be persistent
• Ensure access available from any location
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Review Workflow tracking: the pros
• Workflows were complex, but suited our needs
• In house solution = Spreadsheets – Evolved and developed to suit our processes– Provided an audit trail– Allowed tracking and notes– Archived to refer back to as necessary– Clear workflow
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Review Workflow tracking: the cons
• Only a snapshot
• Difficult to deal with last minute changes
• Lots of cutting and pasting
• Working with lots of windows open
• Only one person could work on a sheet at a time
• Had to maintain it ourselves – risks of single person dependencies
• File storage
• Not ideal to work outside our preferred system
So – began to think about changes
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What did we want?
• Ability to work within Aspire to:– Track easily and quickly where a list is– Provide a clear audit trail for each item on each list
• In addition:– Confirm achievement of KPIs (date stamps)– Provide accurate information across teams
• Needed to be flexible enough to work across all institutions
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Did we achieve what we wanted? Ability to work within Aspire
Get rid of spreadsheets
Track easily and quickly where a list is
Provide accurate information across teams ?
Provide a clear audit trail for each item on each list
Confirm achievement of KPIs (date stamps)
Flexibility across institutions
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Moving to Stages - a brief demo.
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• Testing out Stages has generated further ideas for how we’d like to work in future
• Would like to work with Talis and User Group community to continue conversations about the List Review process and Acquisitions workflows
• Email discussion from March 2013 on LIS-TALIS-ASPIRE suggests this is an area of interest to many Aspire Users
• Needs to overlap with work of the developer group to see what is possible
• A few thoughts and starters for 10…..
So where do we go from here?
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Thoughts / starters for 10…….(1)
• Instead of whole list review, we’re thinking about the following:
A system which:
Directs resources to the work that is required, rather than checking whole lists – lots of redundant effort
Provides reports / daily logs showing changes to lists broken down by new items added to lists? / Items that have been edited? / updated?
Breaks down reports in a way that identifies the task and its owner e.g. if new and not linked to the catalogue it goes to Acquisitions…...
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Thoughts / starters for 10…….(2)A system which:
Provides a mechanism for showing that a task has been completed and can come off the next daily report
Incorporates time / date stamping functionality for KPI reporting and monitoring purposes
Allows use of Stages for redirecting tasks within the workflow e.g.
Link checkers may need to pass back to Digitisation stage or to Acquisitions and vice versa
Rather than try and build into Aspire purchasing rules / formula approach to acquisition, use Aspire to highlight what work needs doing.
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Any thoughts / questions?
