> Hi everyone,

> We have traditionally rolled over our reading lists on an annual basis with the idea being that a third year UG student can go back to a first year 
> Moodle unit area and see the reading list as it was.  We are now considering discontinuing rollover and just having one list.  Moodle also rolls over 
> on an annual basis which means academic staff need to update any reading list items they have embedded in weekly sections of Moodle using our 
> Lancaster or the Talis LTI tool.   We sent out email reminders to academic staff about this over the summer which were largely overseen so lots of 
> embedded links were going to previous years reading lists.   We are concerned that this additional admin to update the links is a barrier. 
 
Hello Rachel,

LSE has never rolled over in five years. Here are the benefits that we see:

- Permanent links, because academics and departmental admin staff inevitably use the Add URL tool in the VLE. No issue with broken links to fix over the summer period.
- Continuity of Google Analytics traffic data over time. No having to map multiple lists to the same module code to get a picture of trends.
- No "new item" alerts in Reviews, and you can see when the list was previously reviewed before, without having to go to a previous rolled over list.
- No duplication of lists, making it easier to do holistic acquisitions with data in Reviews and with ALI reports.
- Not having to deal with archiving last year's lists at any other time than rollover (although I know this is changing soon)
- No issue with the academic going to a previous year's list and editing that, instead of going to the correct, newly created rolled over one

And the drawbacks:

- Five years of hardcoded links in the VLE (over 5000 links last time I checked with our Moodle admin team a year ago), means that rolling over and creating new URIs for items, lists, and sections would potentially cause a major headache with broken links
- If the academics are using the Dashboard, do the clicks reset every year? They might be seeing a cumulative total.
- No in-house copies of previous years reading lists, unless the academic explicitly makes a copy. This has caused problems in the past when teaching staff go on sabbatical for a couple of years, then come back to teach and their list has substantially changed, with no backup of "their" list. If this happens we create a new list for them as a high priority.

Academic staff don't understand the reasons for generating a new URL for a list every year, so I think it's better to keep it simple and leave it as it is, while encouraging them to use the LTI integration instead of hardcoding.

I would still like us to rollover though, so we have an in-house copy of every list for security and backup purposes. I think rolling over every three years might be a useful compromise. I'm investigating that as an option this summer, as we'll have had the LTI integration running for a year by then and hopefully it will have taken root.

Have a nice weekend,

Kevin


Kevin O’Donovan
Library Acquisitions Manager
Content and Discovery Group
London School of Economics and Political Science
10 Portugal Street
London WC2A 2HD
Email: [log in to unmask] 
Tel: +44(0)20 7852 3683

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