Make items available for students

We work with you to make sure that the reading and texts that you recommend to your students are available.

We collect your reading list recommendations using the Leeds Reading Lists system. We purchase new items if needed and insert links into your list for students to access the material from within the Minerva module area. We also make publicly available reading lists online through the Find Lists webpage.

How we make items available

There are a number of ways we make items available for students:

• ebooks and etextbooks
• digitised chapters
• printed books
• High Demand Collection.

We make material available online first to allow the greatest access. This is not as straightforward as you might think for ebooks, and there are some things that you can do to help us speed up the process and use our resources wisely.

What we need from you

These are the key things that you can do to make items available for students:

• Use the Reading Lists system in Minerva to create or update your module reading lists as soon as you can.
  We accept lists at any time, but lists submitted before 14 August will have material available for the start of semester one.
• Use the “Core” tag
  Prioritise core readings using the “Core” tag. This gives students an idea of the importance of the text to the course, and helps us to make sure that there is enough access in place.
  It also speeds up our checking and helps us to prioritise spending on your list. We have specialist suppliers for online textbooks who charge an annual subscription based on cohort size. This approach is only affordable for a couple of key texts per module, so it helps us to focus on the most important items on the list.
• Prioritise your items
  If possible, use the Library Discussion function to let us know the priority order of your required reading, eg by numbering 1–5
  It’s also really helpful to know if any single text on the list will meet student needs, or if it doesn’t matter which one of the texts is available online. We can then direct our purchasing to the book with the best licence conditions for access.
• Use the “OCR” tag for digitising chapters of books
  Tag the reference “OCR” (Online Course Readings). We can digitise a single chapter of a book (or 10% of a work) without paying for additional online access
• Try to use existing library holdings where possible
  Use Library Search to find articles and books already available online (you can limit your search to online only).
• Update your reading list as early as possible throughout the year
  We process lists in the order we receive them and work through them as quickly as possible.

Our process

We base purchase decisions on the number of students on a module and whether the text is core or background reading.

We will check all items tagged “Core”, all newly added items and “OCR” items.

We prioritise the core reading and return to background reading later, in order to process as many core texts as possible before the start of term.

If we find that an item is not available online, we will let you know by using the tag “No eresource available” in the reading list system, or put a comment in the Library Discussion function. We’ll also send you an email, so you know to check your list for comments within Library Discussion.

We will try our best, but we cannot guarantee that requests received after 14 August will be ready for the start of teaching in semester one. We process requests in the order we receive them and we only get in touch with you if there is an issue we need to address.

Please check our reading list progress page to see the volume of requests we are currently working with, if you haven’t heard anything from us.