Talis Insight Workshops 2022 – a reflection of our face to face event

Last week we held our first face to face event since 2019. It was fantastic to see so many of our community in-person to learn from each other, network and enjoy the hospitality of Birmingham at the International Convention Centre. There was a real energy in all the sessions and it was wonderful to see some lightbulb moments amongst the day. 

We held 3 rotating workshops throughout the day based on key themes which were important to our universities. The Talis team facilitated activities to prompt discussion and ideas.  A brief overview of the sessions is below: 

Success and How to Measure it

Consulting Manager Tim Hodson and Support Consultant David Renfree encouraged delegates to think about the metrics that different stakeholders within an institution might use to assess the effectiveness of Talis Aspire as a service. 

Participants were encouraged to identify challenges users can face when defining and measuring success, but also shared examples of how these obstacles had been overcome. Talis shared some principles that other institutions have found to be useful when setting out to evaluate their progress with implementing reading lists.

How Can Libraries Support Teaching and Learning Within Reading Lists?

This workshop was facilitated by Zena Amos, Talis Aspire Product Manager and Emma Dodd, Support Consultant. The session began with an ice breaker to prompt some discussion, asking ‘What is the most unusual request you have had in the library?’ We had some very interesting responses, including ‘Does a Wombat have square poo?’ and ‘Can I take this book out, but smaller?’. Needless to say the minimiser machine was out of action that day, and yes Wombat poo is cube shaped.

Talis shared recent student survey results on the question: ‘How can we improve resource lists, to help you with your studies?’ The responses were split into the following themes: 

• Annotation 
• Structure 
• Variation 

We asked our attendees to share ideas on how they have or could support academics to create reading lists as a teaching tool for these themes. The output of the sessions will feed into a Playbook as a reference point for all of our community. 

Key takeaways included making the most of the student voice when encouraging best practise in Resource Lists, and working peer to peer when deciding what good looks like within departments.

‘The Future of Resources’

Our Account Managers, Helen Anderson and Ian Corns held a session looking forward to ‘The Future of Resources’ where we imagined what resources might look like in the next ten years given market trends such as microcredentials and even crypto coin! We are looking forward to turning the discussion into a series of blog posts in the upcoming months. 

Overall, it was fantastic for our community to discuss in person these areas and share ideas to take back to their institutions. Thank you to everyone who attended and took part. We will be looking to share more of the discussions over the coming weeks and months.

Talis are always looking at ways to support our community networking. If there are particular topics you would like us to cover either in a webinar, blog or future event, do let us know! 

You are able to find out about our upcoming webinars and register to attend to receive the recording by checking our events page, monthly newsletters and reminders via our Service Announcements mailing list. 

We would love to hear from you! If you have any topics you would like us to cover in our upcoming webinars or if you have any areas of best practice or projects you would like to share with our community, do let us know by emailing emma.dodd@talis.com and we’d be delighted to host a webinar with you.