Talis Aspire launches in Canada with the University of Alberta
The University of Alberta has adopted Talis Aspire, becoming the first university in Canada to do so, officially marking the availability of Talis Aspire in Canada. They have chosen to implement Talis Aspire with student experience in mind, to improve access to resources. Talis will be working closely with the University of Alberta to address their needs, and those of the wider Canadian market, whilst providing all of the benefits of the resource list solution used by over 100 institutions across the world.
Talis Aspire will provide students with a digital resource list, provided by faculty for their module. This provides students with easy access to both online and physical resources owned by the institution, whilst allowing faculty to better inform students about the resources with notes, list structure and by assigning importance within the list. The library will benefit from streamlined workflows and a clearer view of resource usage to improve acquisitions decisions. As well as providing an improved solution for students, faculty and the library, the University of Alberta aims to gain deeper insight into resource utilization with the Talis Advanced Management Information System (MIS), providing them with a deeper layer of analytics.
Denise Koufogiannakis, Associate University Librarian at the University of Alberta said: “The University of Alberta Library is pleased to work with Talis as they open up their Aspire product to North America. In our recent review and consideration of systems for the management of course materials, Aspire stood out as the only product that would fully meet our needs. As we move toward implementation, we are excited by the opportunity to provide a better user experience for UAlberta students and faculty, including integration with eClass, the University’s learning management system.”
Having implemented over 100 universities, Talis are familiar with integrating a diverse range of Library Management systems and Learning Management Systems. The University of Alberta will integrate Talis Aspire with their Library Management System, SirsiDynix: Symphony, and is exploring integration with their Learning Management System, Moodle
The Talis Services Team is already working closely with the University of Alberta to kick off the implementation project and will continue to support them closely over the coming months and years, to ensure they are getting the most out of Talis Aspire. They plan to roll-out for students starting in April, with a full launch to come for the new academic year in September 2020.
David Errington, CEO at Talis said: “We are delighted to launch Talis Aspire in Canada with the University of Alberta. We are enthusiastic about helping them achieve their goals around improving the student experience and the provision of resources. We look forward to working with them to support the library as central to the institution as a whole.”
The University of Alberta is one of Canada’s top universities and among the world’s leading public research-intensive universities, with a reputation for excellence across the humanities, sciences, creative arts, business, engineering, and health sciences. The University of Alberta has over 39,000 students, with over 7,000 of those being international students representing 151 countries. The university has 3,620 academic staff. The University of Alberta Library is one of the largest research library systems in North America. The library system ranks first in Canada in terms of the number of volumes per student, with print and electronic collections exceeding 5.4 million titles.
