Newcastle College is partnering with Technology from Sage to implement Talis Aspire as its integrated resource list management system of choice. This offers students studying across degree and foundation level courses access to library holdings via Talis Aspire. With this implementation, Newcastle College hopes to improve the student experience and accessibility by ensuring that every Higher Education (HE) course (levels 4-7) has an associated resource list.
Talis Aspire is an online resource list management system which connects faculty and students to library holdings directly within their course resource lists. The system seamlessly integrates with all library technology ecosystems, offering a holistic view of course material needs and keeping the library at the heart of teaching and learning.
As a Further Education (FE) institution with degree-awarding status, Newcastle College chose Talis Aspire as a curriculum-focused platform to guide students to relevant and available resources. As it welcomes students with varying levels of qualifications, it is incredibly vital to build upon its students’ academic reading skills to prepare them for future careers or additional study. By simplifying resource management with the adoption of Talis Aspire, students will have simplified access to course materials, reduced costs, and will be able to navigate clearly structured resource lists for their studies.
The partnership marks a significant step in Newcastle College’s commitment to delivering its mission and the objectives of all of NCG’s colleges’ strategic plans. Newcastle College’s ambition is to achieve TEF Gold status by 2030. By growing HE provision year-on-year, there’s a need to provide an outstanding digital environment and ensure students are seamlessly connected to library holdings.
Helen Harpin, Library Coordinator at Newcastle College, and Deputy Manager of the TEF Resources Strand for NCG commented…
“We are really excited to partner with Talis Aspire to give our students the best experience possible, which is at the heart of our library offer at Newcastle College and NCG.
Talis will facilitate greater communication and collaboration between the library service and curriculum staff, streamlining and simplifying current processes and supporting the library in its acquisition procedures, ensuring an accurate and viable collection for all.
Talis will directly link students to resources via our Library Catalogue and online discovery tools, which will help overcome difficulties that they currently experience, ensuring clarity and availability of resources.
We feel this is an essential step towards providing high quality resources and the most effective service for our staff and students, and we look forward to seeing our students positively benefit from it.”
Newcastle College plans to launch Talis Aspire by September 2025, once training has been delivered to colleagues.
Talis Aspire fully integrates with library systems, working seamlessly with the library’s Koha library management system and the Summon discovery layer. This was a bonus for the library staff as it meant the implementation process required no additional set up.
By implementing Talis Aspire Newcastle College hopes to enhance the student experience by streamlining access to course materials, improving student research outcomes, and furthering its commitment to excellence in Further and Higher Education teaching, aligning with the institution’s 2030 goals.
Find out more about Talis Aspire.
If you’d like to hear more or receive a product demo, get in touch.
Congratulations to our April Library of the Month, Rollins College! April 24, 2025Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
Rollins College is a liberal arts college, located in Winter Park, Florida and the first recognized college in Florida. Rollins is nationally recognized for its distinctive undergraduate and selected graduate programs and are dedicated to scholarship, academic achievement, creative accomplishment, cultural enrichment, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for April, as Rollins have been great advocates of Talis Aspire and highlighted how the resource list management system aligned with the institution’s textbook affordability initiative.
We asked Derek Malone, Library Dean at Olin Library, Rollins College to tell us more about the university library and Talis Aspire:
“We are excited about Talis Aspire’s possibilities to advance affordability and accessibility in education while strengthening our commitment to student success.
This is an essential step for Olin Library in building a more inclusive and resource-rich learning environment.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
OpenAthens Guest Post: Breaking Down Barriers to Knowledge with Library and Publisher Collaboration April 23, 2025We’re joined by Emma Wilson-Shaw, e-resource manager at OpenAthens for a guest blog post about library and publisher collaboration.
Read Emma’s commentary below:
As a cloud-based authentication service, OpenAthens is all about making access to digital resources easy and secure. It allows library patrons to discover and access online content wherever they choose. They can use any discovery platform they like and they need only a single set of credentials. In essence, it puts library users in the driving seat on a discovery journey without hold-ups, diversions or roadblocks.
Ultimately, libraries are customers with power. Ones that work closely with their vendors and publishers have an advantage in understanding challenges, overcoming technical issues and providing a great user experience for their patrons. Fostering these relationships makes sound sense and, in most cases, libraries will be pushing at an open door when they kick off those conversations. After all, happy customers mean vendors and publishers have fewer support tickets and an easier time when it comes to subscription renewals.
Collaboration gets things done
Last year OpenAthens and Technology from Sage ran a webinar encouraging partnerships between library professionals and IT specialists within their organisations to anticipate and overcome technical challenges. These days new technologies become mainstream fast, and closer cooperation can help hard-pressed library services to keep their systems up to date, and their staff’s skills current. Adoption of AI went from 0-60 in what felt like moments, and librarians with effective relationships with their IT departments will have been able to tap into IT knowhow and fast-track skills development.
In the same collaborative spirit, we strongly encourage libraries to collaborate with publishers. Complicated, multi-layered library systems don’t always integrate optimally with vendor platforms; when they don’t, resources can become harder to discover and use.
In these cases, it’s usually best to arrange a call between the parties, and we’re always keen to facilitate this. Our priority is to scope out a technical issue and fix it, and it helps if the relationship is already established. Typically, a call will involve our library customer, OpenAthens technical support and often me as well.
There isn’t always a quick fix, however. Where this is the case, it helps to be having honest conversations to understand the vendor or publisher’s priorities and make sure they know the library’s difficulty. We may be aware that the issue is more widespread and urgent than the publisher thinks, and relay this to them. And if the library is part of a purchasing consortium, we might be able to leverage its buying power to encourage a speedier resolution.
Advice for libraries
Taking the first step towards developing closer working relationships is simple. Talk to your account manager at the publisher or vendor, if you have one. If you don’t, contact your OpenAthens support provider, and we can bring all parties together.
By understanding each other’s needs, requirements, struggles and challenges, libraries and publishers can work together towards shared goals of making the library end user experience the best it can be.
Publishers and vendors benefit from their licensed resources being available to the people who are entitled to them. And the library can offer a personalized, added-value service that is measurable to ensure future business decisions regarding resource management and product development are data-driven with anonymized user data.
Congratulations to our March Library of the Month, Zurich University of the Arts! March 12, 2025Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
Zurich University of the Arts is one of the largest universities of the arts in Europe. The study and research programme covers the fields of art education, cultural critique, design, film, fine arts, music, dance, theatre and transdisciplinary studies. The Media and Information Centre MIZ combines the university library and its archives and holds around 300’000 media, documents and objects as well as an extensive collection of electronic resources.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for March, as Zurich University of the Arts have been great advocates of Lean Library for a number of years. They have fantastic usage stats for Lean Library, including the Alternatives and Open Access features, ensuring their students have easy access to library resources.
We asked Simone Welti, Library Information Specialist at Zurich University of the Arts to tell us more about the university library and what winning Library of the Month meant to them:
“We have been subscribers to Lean Library since 2020 and development partners for Lean Library Futures since 2021. With Lean Library Futures we hope to increase awareness among our university members of the many great resources they have access to thanks to the library. In addition, by including services such as Lean Library Futures, we are also reassuring members that we are looking at new tools and keeping up to date with the latest technology.
We would like to thank Technology of Sage for choosing us as Library of the Month. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and seeing many new and exciting features in Lean Library Futures.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
AI in Libraries: March Edition March 11, 2025At Technology from Sage we believe that the right technology can remove barriers to knowledge. We recently launched an AI in Libraries feature to round-up the latest AI developments for academic librarians.
Read on for March’s edition, collated by Rajeh Shaikh, Product Manager at Sage.
Oxford University has launched an exciting new five-year collaboration with OpenAI to enhance research and education. This partnership will provide students and faculty with access to different AI tools, including OpenAI’s advanced models, along with research grants and enterprise-level security. One of the initiatives is to digitize Oxford’s historical collections, including thousands of dissertations from the Bodleian Library, and exploring AI’s impact on education and global challenges such as health and climate change. This collaboration is also part of the NextGenAI consortium, where OpenAI is investing $50 million to support innovation in education and research.
Read more about the collaboration.
University libraries in Zimbabwe are facing growing ethical challenges as they are starting to integrate AI into higher education. A recent study highlights the concerns surrounding privacy, intellectual property, and job security, as AI transforms teaching and learning environments. Interviews with librarians and academics reveal that many institutions are still in the early stages of AI adoption and lack clear policies to address these issues. Among the main concerns are transparency, data security, and the potential for plagiarism detection issue.
Yale University Libraries are focusing on AI as a key priority for the next five years, aiming to leverage its potential to enhance access to the university’s extensive collections. Barbara Rockenbach, the reappointed University Librarian, emphasize the importance of digitization and AI in making Yale’s archives more accessible. With ongoing digitization efforts and AI tools already supporting collection management, the library plans to expand AI’s role in guiding students and faculty through its resources. Rockenbach views AI as a new form of literacy, enabling deeper engagement with digital content.
Enhancing the Student Experience: Canterbury Christ Church University Adopts Talis Aspire as Their New Resource List Management Solution February 28, 2025
Canterbury Christ Church University is partnering with Technology from Sage to implement Talis Aspire as their new resource list management solution at the institution. With this implementation of structured reading lists, Canterbury Christ Church is committed to connecting students more easily to library resources and building on academic skills.
Talis Aspire is an online resource list management system which connects faculty and students to library holdings directly within their course resource lists. The system seamlessly integrates with all library technology ecosystems, offering a holistic view of course material needs and keeping the library at the heart of teaching and learning.
Theresa Thurston, Assistant Director: Resources and Digital Discovery, Library and Learning Resources at Canterbury Christ Church University, was impressed by the capabilities of Talis Aspire, and how it aligned with their library strategy and commitment to enhance student outcomes:
“Talis Aspire is a key addition to our library infrastructure and it will help deliver the vision of our library strategy “our next chapter“. It provides many of the benefits that are integral to our library service: innovation, collaboration and is student-centered. It facilitates the collaboration between academics and the library in the development and resourcing of reading lists and will ensure that the library has a full picture of the resources needed for teaching. It will also greatly enhance the student experience by directly connecting students to the resources they need for their studies.
“Our collection strategy aims for a dynamic and responsive collection that fits the needs of our students and researchers. Talis Aspire provides us with the tools needed to deliver this by providing a platform that connects academics, library teams and students and fully supports the entire reading list process.”
The library team at Canterbury Christ Church University were excited by the benefits of Talis Aspire. Members of staff had positive experiences using Talis Aspire at previous institutions, as the reading list management system of choice. The library team saw Talis Aspire as a proven product with well-established workflows but adaptable enough to fit the library’s specific needs.
“[Talis Aspire] will greatly improve both the student and staff experience. Our old reading list process was piecemeal and convoluted with many pain points for academics, students and library staff. Students often struggled to find and access material, academics had multiple routes for requesting library resources and library staff often had insufficient information to make purchasing decisions resulting in email tennis with academics to confirm missing information.
Talis Aspire streamlines these processes simplifying the process of creating, resourcing and accessing reading lists. Building lists is straightforward for academics, library staff have all the information needed to make purchasing decisions and students are linked directly to the structured content they need for their studies. Once fully rolled out we will have, for the first time, an overview of resource requirements across the University enabling us to analyze the teaching collection to ensure that it is fit for purpose and value for money.”
The library team at Canterbury Christ Church found the onboarding experience for Talis Aspire to be incredibly positive and straightforward:
“The onboarding process was incredibly smooth and the team from Technology for Sage were excellent throughout the whole process guiding us through all stages of the implementation. The communication was excellent and solution-focused. The training from David was brilliant and the advice we were given really helped us to develop our workflows and processes.”
This partnership marks a significant step in Canterbury Christ Church’s commitment to help delivering the vision of their library strategy and improving the student experience.
Find out more about Talis Aspire.
If you’d like to hear more or receive a product demo, get in touch.
Sign up for Librarian Futures Part IV February 24, 2025Technology from Sage are working on the upcoming fourth Librarian Futures report. This new report will focus on how academic libraries can be frontiers in the use of AI in Higher Education; including how libraries are responding to AI, and how AI might increase research productivity.
The report will share findings from a mass survey of librarians and students worldwide on AI and the library.
Complete the form now to receive the report when it is published in May 2025.
Technology from Sage’s Librarian Futures series of reports explore librarian-patron relationships in the digital age, and the ever-changing role of the academic library. The topics of the reports range from the knowledge gap between students and librarians, and the librarian skills landscape.
Technology from Sage is a curated suite of innovative library technologies that amplify the value of your library to improve every stage of the academic workflow – from managing reading lists to discovering online resources and reference management.
Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
UNT Health Science Center (UNTHSC) at Fort Worth is an academic medical center specializing in patient-centered education, research and health care. The Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library supports the education, research, patient care, and community service missions at UNTHSC by meeting the information needs of students, faculty, staff, and the local health sciences community. The library provides expert instruction in the use of information resources, and access to professionally trained librarians for research and patient care related literature search assistance.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for February, as UNTHSC are committed to improving student and researcher outcomes and ensuring that they have direct access to course materials. UNTHSC are fantastic advocates of Talis Aspire and have seen positive results from using course resource management software, including savings of over $125k annually for one class alone.
We asked Elizabeth Speer, Associate Director of Digital Scholarship, Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library at UNTHSC to tell us more about the university library and what winning Library of the Month meant to them:
“One of the goals of the library has been to partner with other campus departments to broaden our reach as it pertains to the use of library materials in the classroom. Having the right tools at our disposal meant that not only could we provide access to our materials in a manner that complied with our subscriptions but also allowed us the opportunity to educate our faculty on copyright and their rights as authors. But, best of all we were able to save our students hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs and further supported student success by providing direct access to library resources at the point of instruction by working with our instructional designers and faculty in the selection of educational materials.
Being Technology from Sage’s Library of the Month recognizes our work in connecting and educating our faculty in copyright, fair use, and relevant library resources while supporting the financial and educational needs of our students. We are grateful for our partnership with Technology from Sage that has enabled us to improve our services and increase student engagement and cost saving across campus.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
Talis Aspire Achieves Top Technical Ranking in APUC Framework February 14, 2025London, 14th February 2025 – Talis Aspire, the trusted resource list management system used by over 100 institutions, has ranked first in the technical assessment of the Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC) framework for Resource and Reading List Systems.
APUC, the procurement center of expertise for all of Scotland’s universities and colleges, evaluates solutions based on multiple technical and commercial criteria, to maximise the value of Scotland’s investment in further and higher education. Through regional purchasing consortia, the APUC framework is also available to universities and colleges across the UK.
Talis Aspire emerged as the top performer in the technical evaluation, scoring 60 points out of a possible 70 — the highest among all competitors.
Talis Aspire distinguished itself by placing first in the following key areas for academic libraries:
Talis Aspire also earned joint first place in:
“All of us at Technology from Sage are delighted that Talis Aspire has received the highest technical score in the APUC framework. This achievement reflects the dedication of our team in developing a product that truly supports our customers. Their feedback drives us to continuously improve Talis Aspire, and we have exciting plans for the next 18 months.”
Scott Gibbens, Head of Product for Talis Aspire, Technology from Sage
By securing the highest technical ranking, Talis Aspire reinforces its position as a trusted, future-ready resource list management system. This recognition underscores Technology from Sage’s commitment to enhancing student success and optimising services which amplify the value of the academic library.
Talis Aspire is an online resource list management system that fully integrates with your library systems to streamline course resourcing, copyright compliance and acquisitions. Talis Aspire connects faculty and students to library holdings directly within their course resource lists, keeping the library at the heart of teaching and learning.
Technology from Sage is a curated suite of innovative library technologies that amplify the value of your library to improve every stage of the academic workflow – from managing reading lists to discovering online resources and reference management.
Talis Aspire Case Study: Glasgow School of Art January 28, 2025
Glasgow School of Art (GSA), a specialist higher education institution with 2,500 students, had been using static PDF lists for course resources for many years. In 2019, they decided to implement a resource list management platform for the first time. While functional, these lists lacked flexibility and adaptability, and the shift to hybrid teaching during COVID-19 highlighted their limitations. Therefore, they decided to implement a new system to meet their changing needs.
GSA identified 14 essential and desirable criteria to guide their search for a new solution, prioritizing enhanced student and academic experiences alongside improved library workflows. Students needed the ability to filter, search, and customize reading lists. Academics sought seamless integration with the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), public accessibility for prospective students, and exportable bibliographic references. For the library team, integration with the CLA’s Digital Content Store (DCS) was critical.
After evaluating various options, Talis Aspire was chosen for its flexibility and ability to align resource lists with course structures and extracurricular activities.
GSA’s library team successfully managed the migration to Talis Aspire, supported by flexible onboarding from Technology from Sage’s Operations team. Despite a tight two-month timeline before the academic year, the team ensured a smooth transition. The expertise and adaptability of the Customer Success Consultants were pivotal in meeting GSA’s needs.
“We asked to move some of our training around to accommodate staff leave over the summer which was kindly granted. The Customer Success Consultants are very friendly, flexible and keen to help.”
Jenna Meek, Assistant Librarian – Resource Lists, Glasgow School of Art
A detailed workflow was established to facilitate collaboration across library teams, enabling the migration and refinement of nearly 300 lists. This approach ensured accurate metadata, streamlined processes, and lists that were ready for use. The Operations team also guided the library staff in creating instructional materials to demonstrate key functionalities, such as filtering, note-taking, and bibliographic exports.
Within three months, GSA successfully launched Talis Aspire, migrating just under 300 resource lists comprising over 8,500 items and relinking 700 scans through DCS integration. The new system’s streamlined processes reduced the time required for updates, paving the way for academic self-management in the future.
Feedback from academics highlighted the seamless Canvas integration and support for embedding list sections. Academic staff also appreciated the system’s versatility in reference styles and its integration with reference management tools.
“Talis Aspire is fantastic and seems a lot more streamlined with Canvas.”
Feedback from academic staff
Talis Aspire has exceeded expectations for enhancing internal workflows and improving the resource acquisition process. Library staff have benefited from features like the Review process, which streamlined work assignment and reduced reliance on spreadsheets.
“The Consultants are very knowledgeable of the whole system and how it has been implemented at many different institutions. We were lucky that our consultant was a trained librarian prior to working for Technology from Sage, so had a good knowledge of how the system operated practically and logistically within library workflows.”
Jenna Meek, Assistant Librarian – Resource Lists, Glasgow School of Art
Moving forward, GSA plans to gather student feedback and pilot academic-led list editing. Training materials will support this hybrid approach, combining self-management by academics with library staff oversight.
GSA is also exploring Talis Aspire’s potential for student partnerships and co-creation of resource lists, supporting broader academic initiatives.
Discover how Talis Aspire can transform your resource list management. If you’d like to learn more or request a demo, get in touch.
