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Although my liaison library colleagues can come at this from a far more informed pedagogical perspective than me; from a technical service and application management point of view I echo the concerns that Annette raises. Every site implementing Aspire has to address the question of the balance of Resource List content as it is reflected in the Resource List system, the VLE, the library web site and catalogue and the university's web and teaching spaces. Careful attention has to be paid to the question of which sort of teaching content (and related support materials) goes where, and numerous policies may require sign-off and best practice guidelines need drafting to ensure that academics are clear where the university expects them to create content and where students should be directed to discover this. The new 'Pages' functionality in Aspire is not - as far as I am aware - an enhancement that customers have advanced as a priority, and I can honestly say that I've never had a conversation with an academic, a student or another librarian in which the phrase "I wish Aspire came with a built in all-purpose page creator" has entered the conversation. My own view is that the Pages option muddies rather than improves the functionality of Aspire, and, like Annette, I feel that this is a functional tangent for the application. I'd rather see Talis focus on making Aspire a world-class, leading edge Resource System application than spend time and developer resource on bolting on the sort of web page hosting functionality that an academic can create for themselves on Wikidot, Wordpress or a thousand other online locations, should they choose to do so. It is also my view that significant functional enhancements of this type should not be auto-released, defaulted-in and non-optionally mapped to existing roles in Aspire (and without the necessary support documentation being available) but should instead be preview-able and optional. An 'agile' release strategy is great for getting enhancements out to customers in an efficient, timely way. But when Talis wrong-foots those trying to manage the service by switching on significant new functionality without allowing them time to assess, prepare and decide how (and if) the new buttons should appear in the environment, agile can very easily become premature. If you not had a chance to experiment with Pages as yet, a demonstration 'Page' (that I've drawn up to help show library colleagues what's possible in Pages) can be viewed here: http://resourcelists.ntu.ac.uk/page/pages-in-the-rlms.html In the meantime, I've no management tools which would allow me to report to my managers how many Pages have been created in our Tenancy, by whom, with what titles, and included on which lists. And I've no Pause button to enable me to suspend this function while my managers decide how and when it might be used or supported. Regards Richard Cross Resource Discovery and Innovation Manager Libraries and Learning Resources Hollymount House Nottingham Trent University Nottingham NG1 4BU t: +44(0)115 848 4878 m: 07789 983916 e: [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Talis Aspire Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Annette Moore Sent: 21 March 2011 13:09 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [LIS-TALIS-ASPIRE] Aspire release, 14th March Has anyone else had a look at the New Page option released last week? My first reactions are somewhat mixed. A richer note function would have been useful within the pre-existing note field but I hadn't envisaged the option to create a separate web page. This seems to be moving away from the idea of a Resource List. Already there is overlap between use of the course VLE and Aspire Reading Lists. We also noticed that academics could copy and paste from word into the New Page and have concerns that this may be used as a 'short cut' to paste their reading list in from the course handbook (usually a word doc) rather than bookmarking resources and adding them to the list therefore making them available for review. It would need to be clear to academics that any Resources mentioned in a 'New Page' would not be part of the library review of the list. Annette --On 14 March 2011 20:05 +0000 Chris Clarke <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi all, > > > We released a new version of Aspire today. This version included: > > > * Pages - Building on the recent release of the rich note > functionality, Pages are a new feature supporting even rich and > extended educational notes and annotations, including those that embed > external images and even video content. Available to list editors, > Pages work a bit like a large note, with the ability for a much wider range of formatting. > However, unlike a note, each page gets its own web address and can be > included on multiple lists - ideal for tutorial or help content you > want to re-use again and again. You can add a new page directly from > the list editor. Users can either create content directly in the rich > WYSIWYG editor, or paste in pre-prepared content directly from > Microsoft Word - rich formatting is preserved. We'll be talking more > about Pages soon via the product blog on www.talisaspire.com and in > forthcoming video tutorials. This email is intended solely for the addressee. It may contain private and confidential information. If you are not the intended addressee, please take no action based on it nor show a copy to anyone. In this case, please reply to this email to highlight the error. 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