A busy month at Talis…

It has been a busy month at Talis – not only did we have our own Talis Insight Europe 2016 event to attend, but also a number of other key events fell in April:

UKSG Conference, Bournemouth

This was the first time Talis had sponsored this event which saw a number of the team enjoying the bracing weather in Bournemouth. John, our General Manager in Australia, left his home basking in 30c plus to arrive in a storm battered Bournemouth 36 hours later. Luckily it did brighten up during the conference, so John’s image of Bournemouth wasn’t all grey. The team attended a number of the interesting and varied programme available along with manning our stand in the exhibition hall. It was great to meet with our existing customers along with making a number of new contacts, including a good representation from Scandinavian universities. It seems that word about our work in Norway is spreading – read our latest success story from BI Norwegian Business School. The conference also corresponded with the joint Talis and Vitalsource press release about our new technology collaboration, you can find out more here.

SCONUL –  Measuring excellence: Meeting the challenges of the proposed changes to sector

Another first for Talis, and a great experience. With a delegates body comprised of library directors and senior managers, this was a great opportunity to hear more about their challenges, to catch-up with our customers and to make new contacts. The morning sessions really majored on the imminent Teaching Excellence Framework, both the status of the project and the challenges/opportunities it brings. With year 1 of the TEF taking place in Oct 16 (on the current timetable), now is a good time to be thinking about the central role that libraries play in teaching and learning and how this could be used to feed into the TEF accreditation for your institution. Adopting strategies and technologies like reading list software must be a good be one way of demonstrating a commitment to supporting teaching excellence, e.g. Student experience and improving NSS scores is often cited as a key reason for the adoption of reading list software. The NSS scores will form one of the key measures for the TEF.

Of course there was also the day job to be getting on with, which saw us all buzzing around the country visiting customers.

With John and Rebecca both in the UK, April was also a great chance for the full Sales and Services teams to get together. We keep in regular contact remotely, but nothing beats getting together in person. Comparing notes on our respective areas reinforces the high numbers of similarities between the UK and Australia/New Zealand, whilst also identifying important differences. Such meetings allow us to share best practice, learn from each other and inform our priorities.

Signs are May is going to be another busy month which started with attending another great conference run by the M25 Group, but more about that next month…