LONDON, UK (8 October 2025) – Kortext, a global leader in digital content, library and learning solutions, has acquired Talis – a platform that bridges the library’s resources with the academic curricula – from Sage, a leading independent academic publisher. This strategic move enhances Kortext’s position as a key provider of library solutions by simplifying and enabling seamless discovery for educators and learners looking for course content.
Sage is transferring full ownership of Talis to Kortext, ensuring long-term investment and innovation in Talis products. Under Kortext’s leadership, Talis will enhance its core features, expand compatibility with library systems, and benefit from ongoing investments in AI. A customer communication process will begin immediately to ensure libraries are kept informed.
Read the full press release for more details and learn more about Kortext.
Regent College London adopts Talis Aspire to Maximise Student Success July 24, 2025Regent College London (RCL) are partnering with Talis to implement Talis Aspire. This will provide the college’s 10,000 students with streamlined access to library holdings via Talis Aspire, an integrated resource list management system.
RCL offers Higher National Certificates, foundation year routes, foundation degrees, bachelor’s degrees, top-up degrees and master’s degrees in a wide array of subjects, with a focus on employability and developing in-demand skills. The RCL community welcomes students with varying degrees of qualifications and levels of confidence using technology. Students had previously experienced issues with accessing library resources for their courses. Talis Aspire provides a solution by taking the onus off students with centralised course materials readily available via the library – saving students time and money.
Reflecting on this exciting partnership, Chris Baldwin, Director of Digital Academic Strategy at RCL, commented:
“Access to the right learning materials at the right time is essential for student success. We’re excited to launch this partnership, which will empower our students and enrich the overall educational experience we provide.”
By adopting Talis Aspire, students will have simplified access to course materials and will be able to navigate clearly structured resource lists for their studies. This aligns with RCL’s commitment to put the student experience first and at the heart of teaching and learning.
Find out more about Talis Aspire.
If you’d like to hear more or receive a product demo, get in touch.
Key Takeaways on Rethinking Student Engagement with Reading Lists July 15, 2025Ken Chad, founder of HELibTech and director of Ken Chad Consulting Ltd, joined Georgia Hajipieris, Product Manager, Talis and Matthew Weldon, Library Patron Consultant in conversation for a recent webinar: Rethinking Student Engagement with Library Resources: Collaboration, Annotation, and the Librarian’s Role.
We examined how educators can bring reading, annotation, and collaboration directly into course reading lists and showcased Talis Engage, the new feature within Talis Aspire and Talis CourseFlow.
The panel discussed perspectives on increasing collaboration in the classroom, sparking discussions and techniques to ensure reading lists go one step further with engagement.
Read on for the key insights from the discussion:
Reading list systems have grown from administrative tools into integral components of the learning experience. As Ken Chad noted, reading lists—especially in the UK—are now ubiquitous and increasingly embedded in institutional strategies around digital transformation. Unlike older models based on “course reserves,” modern reading list platforms allow librarians and faculty to curate, prioritize, and contextualize resources in ways that scaffold student learning.
“I now see reading lists as a really strategic solution that helps bridge the gap between librarians and academics and in a wider sense by blurring the boundaries between what we thought of as library technology and educational technology. And in fact, I think that’s really important.
[Reading lists] add also significant value to the role of librarians and can help raise their profile in the university as a whole, and not least in those terms of the digital transformation agenda I just mentioned. Reading lists clearly showed their value during Covid by helping students to get easy access to critical online resources for their courses.
Now we’re seeing a new phase of solution to solutions to enable students to better engage, collaborate, annotate reading lists resources.”
Ken Chad, founder of HELibTech and director of Ken Chad Consulting Ltd
For librarians, this shift opens up opportunities to engage more deeply with academics and to shape the way students interact with course materials. As Ken puts it, reading lists help blur the boundary between library technology and educational technology—making librarians critical partners in pedagogy.
Georgia and Matthew from Talis introduced Talis Engage, a new feature within Talis Aspire and Talis CourseFlow, that adds collaborative reading and social annotation tools directly into the reading list environment. Students can now highlight, comment, and discuss readings in real time—either publicly or anonymously—within the same platform they already use to access course materials.
Read more about Talis Engage in this blog post.
The Talis Engage feature enables faculty to upload lecture slides and additional learning materials into their lists.
This approach supports flipped classroom models, where students engage with materials in advance of class sessions. The panel emphasized how these tools mirror the kind of active learning and peer-to-peer interaction that drives deeper comprehension—especially in online and hybrid environments.
Notably, these features are customizable. Faculty can upload various file types (PDFs, images, lecture notes, even audio) and set permissions around commenting and downloading. For librarians, this means more centralized content management and better support for copyright compliance through integrations.
“Talis Engage will help drive engagement by having the ability to transform that reading list into more of a teaching and learning tool as well with an interactive space, enabling collaboration. Students and faculty can annotate materials together. It’s not just one person doing something on their own and then having the opportunity to come together. They’re doing that at the same time in real time and simplifies access.”
Georgia Hajipieris, Product Manager, Talis
One consistent thread across the webinar was a focus on student-centered learning. Whether it’s making resources easier to access through the VLE, enabling quiet students to comment anonymously, or helping students annotate primary sources directly, the goal is the same: to meet learners where they are.
Talis Engage allows students to keep personal notes alongside public discussion threads, helping them revisit and reflect on material throughout the semester. This kind of integrated engagement encourages not just comprehension, but ownership of the learning process.
For academic librarians, reading lists are no longer just about making resources available—they’re about making learning happen. With new tools for collaboration, annotation, and seamless integration, tools such as Talis Engage are turning reading lists into dynamic hubs for engagement.
By embracing this shift, and by advocating for their evolving role in pedagogy, librarians can ensure they remain at the heart of higher education’s digital transformation.
Talis Engage is available on request now for all institutions subscribed to Talis Aspire or Talis CourseFlow. Customers can contact support to enable Talis Engage for their institution.
Is your institution looking to boost library impact and enhance the student learning experience? Request a demo to see how the new Talis Engage feature works in Talis Aspire and Talis CourseFlow. If you’re not sure which solution is best for you, get in touch and we can guide you
What happened at Talis Insight APAC 2025? June 3, 2025If you haven’t heard of Talis Insight APAC before, it’s our free, two-day event for library professionals to gather, network and discuss the role of Talis Aspire resource lists, sharing ideas for best practice.
This year’s event was hosted by Griffith University with 35 attendees across the two days. It was an insightful two days with lots of ideas shared, collaboration and networking.
Read on for a recap of Talis Insight APAC 2025…
The event began with introductions and a keynote address by Nicola Langford, International Sales Director. Nicola thanked our wonderful hosts, Griffith University, for helping us put the event together in such a fabulous location: The Ship Inn in Brisbane.
We then heard from Sandra Kalms, Manager Scholarly Resource Services at Griffith University, truly kicked things off by delivering an acknowledgement of country which connected the significance of Brisbane’s South Bank location to local First Nations people and our opportunity to build on this by learning, gathering and exchanging information.
Sandra also summed up the aims of the conference superbly:
Finally, she introduced our very first Insight APAC theme song! It was created by Suno AI, and you can listen to it here.
Our next presenter was Scott Gibbens, Head of Product at Talis. Scott joined us in the early hours of the UK morning to present on the 2025 Talis Aspire roadmap highlights and upcoming improvements for 2025/2026. Throughout the session, we heard plenty of questions from attendees around copyright, open access, tagging and Talis Engage. You can read our blog post about the new Talis Engage feature within Talis Aspire here.
After a coffee break, our Talis Aspire User Group representatives Natalie Hull from The University of Queensland and Bex Carruthers from Deakin University took us through an icebreaker activity of which tested everyone’s book knowledge.
Next up we had Isabelle Laskaris, Support Consultant, presented on User Metrics and Trends. Looking across our 13 APAC institutions, Isabelle took us through the data around the top 10 vendors across reading lists, LTI usage, student reading intentions, the proportion of electronic items and academic edits across reading lists in the region.
After lunch, we had our user group discussion hosted by TAUG reps Natalie and Bex. This is one of the cornerstone sessions of Insight APAC, with lots of engaging discussion amongst everyone in the room. This year, AI dominated the conversation (surprise, surprise!) with lots of sharing and questioning around best practices and the way forward. We also touched on issues such as eBook subscription models and reading list length.
Day Two
After a quick welcome from Nicola, we kicked off Day Two of the event with a presentation from Hannah Armitage, Discovery UX Specialist at The University of Melbourne. Hannah joined us virtually to present on “user empathy” and the library’s quest to understand and transform the online library experience. Hannah shared how the library undertook a project intended to really get to know their users and how building a series of archetypes around their users has helped the library team to empathize and better serve their diverse user communities.
Next up, Jamie McDonald, Reading Lists and Resource Sharing Specialist at La Trobe University, showed us La Trobe’s Reading List Digital Usage Dashboard, built using Power BI and Advanced MIS data. Intended to spark conversations with academics around the reading list resources that have been engaged with, Jamie took us through the process of creating the dashboard including the challenges and limitations and hopes for the future. Jamie also then took us through how he uses Talis API’s to retrieve valuable data from reading lists and to update, create and remove resources and lists.
Our next session was hosted by Grace Fu, Librarian and Katrina Henderson, Business Librarian (both from Griffith University) who spoke about their cross-team efforts to transition 100% of required and recommended readings online before 2026. Grace and Katrina both spoke about their respective roles and their team roles within the project and how they prepared the data, communicated with publishers and academics, and used tools such as Power BI and Excel to help them in their efforts.
After a coffee break, Nicola Langford challenged the room to imagine it’s 2030 and posed the questions: What would your ‘dream’ resource list system look like? What major innovations would you include? How would it evolve to help you deliver your strategic objectives? The challenge was to ‘think big.’
We then allowed each table time to think about their answers and report back to the rest of the room. There were some fascinating and valuable suggestions ranging from using AI to build reading lists via content in the LMS to more guided student and academic usage of readings lists through features such as information on length of reading list time and a traffic light system to indicate which resources are and are not used. These contributions have been delivered to the Talis Product team.
After lunch, Anna Lagos, Associated Director, Operations, Technology and Strategy from The University of Queensland joined us to discuss the university’s implementation of Skilltype. Skilltype is a learning platform with thousands of resources organized by skills and development needs which will help UQ to meet their objectives around People and Culture commitments. Anna provided a live demonstration of the Skilltype platform and discussed how the insights the platform offers might help the library decide what skill areas to focus on.
For our parting words, we thanked Griffith University and all their library team for hosting the event and all our speakers for participating and sharing their knowledge. We had a great time and hope the spirited conversations, discussion and knowledge sharing can continue throughout the year and beyond.
Don’t forget to check out the AI-generated theme song Sandra created, and the Insight Asia-Pacific 2025 reading list put together by Neil Cotter from Griffith University. We’re already looking forward to Insight Asia-Pacific 2026…
Improving Student Accessibility: Announcing Talis Aspire’s First Further Education Partner, Newcastle College April 28, 2025Newcastle College is partnering with Talis 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.
Enhancing the Student Experience: Canterbury Christ Church University Adopts Talis Aspire as Their New Resource List Management Solution February 28, 2025Canterbury Christ Church University is partnering with Talis 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.
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 Talis 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
By securing the highest technical ranking, Talis Aspire reinforces its position as a trusted, future-ready resource list management system. This recognition underscores Talis’ 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.
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 Talis’ 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 Talis, 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.
Enhancing User Experience with Talis Aspire: 11 Updates for Improved Workflows October 1, 2024We continually strive to accommodate and adapt to the diverse working styles of the librarians, teachers and students utilizing the Talis Aspire platform.
Read on to discover the 11 Talis Aspire updates we’ve been working to improve workflows and usability for both librarians and patrons.
Librarians can now export from an archived or draft list to CSV, RIS, and PDF formats. This process follows the same principal as a Published list, allowing librarians to share entire lists and bibliographies as documents with faculty.
Users without a profile who receive an invite to become a list publisher are now first taken to the profile creation screen and immediately after redirected to accept the invite, removing the risk of leaving the invitation unaccepted.
Users are now able to filter items within a list that include a note from the library. This streamlines checking items which require actions when preparing for the next time the course is offered.
Articles and book chapters now include additional metadata as part of CSV and PDF exports. The title and volume authors or editors of articles and book chapters are now included, providing consistent bibliographic information with correct referencing and improved item discoverability.
CSV
Talis Aspire onboarding guides for academics and librarians have been updated and expanded, appearing every 30 days on their reading list homepage. If you’re a Talis Aspire customer and want to make any changes to the frequency in which guides appear for your institution, please contact the support team.
The Google Preview button has been relocated, now appearing within an item’s information, under the Alternative availability section.
Institutions using Talis Aspire Copyright Clearance or the DCS integration can now add internal messages in digitization requests. The free-text field allows notes to be added, providing context for the person receiving the request.
The process of reporting broken links has been redesigned, making it much more intuitive for a broken link reporter to add as much information as possible, streamlining the whole process. The screen displayed will vary depending on whether the user reporting the broken link is logged into the system.
When a user is logged in:
Users have access to a free text box where they can provide detailed information to help resolve the issue. The system automatically captures the reporter’s email for librarians to reach out if additional details are required. Additionally, users have the option to submit their report anonymously.
When a user is not logged in:
When a user is not logged in, they can use a free text box to describe the issue in detail and have the option to provide their email address, allowing librarians to contact them for further information if necessary.
Reading lists can now be searched by an instructor’s name, even if they aren’t the list owner. This enables students to find reading lists using their instructor’s name, without needing the precise course code or title.
List creators can now leave internal notes for entire reading lists, facilitating communication with other faculty members and library staff without these notes being visible to students.
List Status
List editors can now better understand the status of their list. We’ve added a status label and information text under the list’s title:
The status label and text changes immediately when a change to the status of the list is made.
Button Redesign
We’ve added a new feature which has long been requested by our Talis Aspire users. When editing a list, users will now always have a reminder on screen that they need to publish any edits that they’ve made, and access to a button to allow them to do so quickly. Examples of how this appears can be seen above.
Keep an eye out as we’re about to add buttons for “Review and Publish” and “Review” to the list footer.
Want to try Talis Aspire for yourself? Get in touch with us to get a customized demonstration.
