Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
Zurich University of the Arts is one of the largest universities of the arts in Europe. The study and research programme covers the fields of art education, cultural critique, design, film, fine arts, music, dance, theatre and transdisciplinary studies. The Media and Information Centre MIZ combines the university library and its archives and holds around 300’000 media, documents and objects as well as an extensive collection of electronic resources.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for March, as Zurich University of the Arts have been great advocates of Lean Library for a number of years. They have fantastic usage stats for Lean Library, including the Alternatives and Open Access features, ensuring their students have easy access to library resources.
We asked Simone Welti, Library Information Specialist at Zurich University of the Arts to tell us more about the university library and what winning Library of the Month meant to them:
“We have been subscribers to Lean Library since 2020 and development partners for Lean Library Futures since 2021. With Lean Library Futures we hope to increase awareness among our university members of the many great resources they have access to thanks to the library. In addition, by including services such as Lean Library Futures, we are also reassuring members that we are looking at new tools and keeping up to date with the latest technology.
We would like to thank Technology of Sage for choosing us as Library of the Month. We look forward to continuing our collaboration and seeing many new and exciting features in Lean Library Futures.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
AI in Libraries: March Edition March 11, 2025At Technology from Sage we believe that the right technology can remove barriers to knowledge. We recently launched an AI in Libraries feature to round-up the latest AI developments for academic librarians.
Read on for March’s edition, collated by Rajeh Shaikh, Product Manager at Sage.
Oxford University has launched an exciting new five-year collaboration with OpenAI to enhance research and education. This partnership will provide students and faculty with access to different AI tools, including OpenAI’s advanced models, along with research grants and enterprise-level security. One of the initiatives is to digitize Oxford’s historical collections, including thousands of dissertations from the Bodleian Library, and exploring AI’s impact on education and global challenges such as health and climate change. This collaboration is also part of the NextGenAI consortium, where OpenAI is investing $50 million to support innovation in education and research.
Read more about the collaboration.
University libraries in Zimbabwe are facing growing ethical challenges as they are starting to integrate AI into higher education. A recent study highlights the concerns surrounding privacy, intellectual property, and job security, as AI transforms teaching and learning environments. Interviews with librarians and academics reveal that many institutions are still in the early stages of AI adoption and lack clear policies to address these issues. Among the main concerns are transparency, data security, and the potential for plagiarism detection issue.
Yale University Libraries are focusing on AI as a key priority for the next five years, aiming to leverage its potential to enhance access to the university’s extensive collections. Barbara Rockenbach, the reappointed University Librarian, emphasize the importance of digitization and AI in making Yale’s archives more accessible. With ongoing digitization efforts and AI tools already supporting collection management, the library plans to expand AI’s role in guiding students and faculty through its resources. Rockenbach views AI as a new form of literacy, enabling deeper engagement with digital content.
Enhancing the Student Experience: Canterbury Christ Church University Adopts Talis Aspire as Their New Resource List Management Solution February 28, 2025
Canterbury Christ Church University is partnering with Technology from Sage 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.
Sign up for Librarian Futures Part IV February 24, 2025Technology from Sage are working on the upcoming fourth Librarian Futures report. This new report will focus on how academic libraries can be frontiers in the use of AI in Higher Education; including how libraries are responding to AI, and how AI might increase research productivity.
The report will share findings from a mass survey of librarians and students worldwide on AI and the library.
Complete the form now to receive the report when it is published in May 2025.
Technology from Sage’s Librarian Futures series of reports explore librarian-patron relationships in the digital age, and the ever-changing role of the academic library. The topics of the reports range from the knowledge gap between students and librarians, and the librarian skills landscape.
Technology from Sage is a curated suite of innovative library technologies that amplify the value of your library to improve every stage of the academic workflow – from managing reading lists to discovering online resources and reference management.
Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
UNT Health Science Center (UNTHSC) at Fort Worth is an academic medical center specializing in patient-centered education, research and health care. The Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library supports the education, research, patient care, and community service missions at UNTHSC by meeting the information needs of students, faculty, staff, and the local health sciences community. The library provides expert instruction in the use of information resources, and access to professionally trained librarians for research and patient care related literature search assistance.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for February, as UNTHSC are committed to improving student and researcher outcomes and ensuring that they have direct access to course materials. UNTHSC are fantastic advocates of Talis Aspire and have seen positive results from using course resource management software, including savings of over $125k annually for one class alone.
We asked Elizabeth Speer, Associate Director of Digital Scholarship, Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library at UNTHSC to tell us more about the university library and what winning Library of the Month meant to them:
“One of the goals of the library has been to partner with other campus departments to broaden our reach as it pertains to the use of library materials in the classroom. Having the right tools at our disposal meant that not only could we provide access to our materials in a manner that complied with our subscriptions but also allowed us the opportunity to educate our faculty on copyright and their rights as authors. But, best of all we were able to save our students hundreds of thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs and further supported student success by providing direct access to library resources at the point of instruction by working with our instructional designers and faculty in the selection of educational materials.
Being Technology from Sage’s Library of the Month recognizes our work in connecting and educating our faculty in copyright, fair use, and relevant library resources while supporting the financial and educational needs of our students. We are grateful for our partnership with Technology from Sage that has enabled us to improve our services and increase student engagement and cost saving across campus.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
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 Technology from Sage 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 Aspire, Technology from Sage
By securing the highest technical ranking, Talis Aspire reinforces its position as a trusted, future-ready resource list management system. This recognition underscores Technology from Sage’s 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.
Technology from Sage is a curated suite of innovative library technologies that amplify the value of your library to improve every stage of the academic workflow – from managing reading lists to discovering online resources and reference management.
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 Technology from Sage’s 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 Technology from Sage, 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.
Congratulations to our Library of the Month, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam! January 21, 2025Each month we select a Library of the Month to honor libraries who have been using our library technologies in interesting and innovative ways, from creating well-curated reading lists with Talis Aspire to encouraging uptake of the Lean Library browser extension amongst their students. We’re also appreciating the intensive work of librarians in curating these technologies and improving learning outcomes for their students.
The winning library will be awarded a prize to share amongst their team or a donation to a charity of their choice as a way for us to say thank you.
Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam is a large university with 9 faculties, more than 150 bachelor’s programs, pre-master and master programs with 31,761 students, of which 19,736 are Bachelor students and 12,025 are Master students. The university’s motto is: Don’t just become something, become someone. Since its founding in 1880, VU has stood for scientific and values-driven education, research and valorization.
We’ve awarded them our Library of the Month Award for January, as the library team are committed to supporting their students find the research they need at the right time, directly in patron workflows. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam are great advocates of both Lean Library and Talis Aspire and presented a session on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) at the inaugural Tech from Sage Insight Conference in 2023.
We asked Cees van Gent, Head of Department, Educational Support, University Library (Afdelingshoofd, Onderwijsondersteuning Universiteitsbibliotheek) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to tell us more about the university library and what winning Library of the Month meant to them:
“Winning this award is a confirmation of our mission to support our academic staff and students in finding and using the content/learning materials they need for their research, lectures, and studies.
We try to support our end users where and when needed by providing them tools like Lean Library that can bring our services into the user’s workflow. We work together with parties such as Technology from Sage to develop and deliver this.
More information about how we work with Technology from Sage is to be found in this case study.”
Discover our previous winners below:
Could your library be next?
Join us next month to see who’s won.
Improved Research Integrity with Lean Library’s Latest Upgrade January 20, 2025At Technology from Sage, we’re constantly innovating to redefine and amplify the academic library’s role in advancing teaching, learning, and research. We’ve significantly upgraded our Lean Library browser extension, which prioritizes research integrity.
Lean Library has always been focused on embedding your library’s resources into your patrons’ online workflow, making research seamless and efficient. Our partnership with Scite has already empowered students and researchers with valuable citation insights, showing how academic articles are cited—whether supporting, contrasting, or neutral. But research demands more, especially in the age of GenAI…
Image 1: How the Scite Smart Citations feature works with Lean Library to show how a scientific paper has been cited.
With this new update, Lean Library’s integration with Scite now goes one step further, pulling retractions and editorial notices directly into the Scite widget on the Lean Library browser extension. As researchers browse academic articles, they can instantly see whether an article has been retracted or flagged with an editorial notice, in addition to its citation context.
“Historically, it has been very challenging to tell if a paper has been supported, challenged, or even retracted. Scite was started to solve these challenges. Through our partnership with Lean Library, students and researchers can now easily access articles anywhere online and can be sure they are not missing any critical notices, such as a retraction. We’re thrilled to be working with Lean Library helping millions of researchers and students do better work.”
Josh Nicholson, PhD, Chief Strategy Officer at Research Solutions and co-founder of Scite
In the fast-paced world of academic publishing, maintaining trust and rigor in research is paramount. In 2023, the number of journal retractions surpassed 10,000 for the first time. Retraction data ensures that researchers can avoid relying on outdated or questionable studies, while editorial notices provide context about the quality or reliability of a publication.
The upgraded Lean Library extension displays this new layer of information automatically on academic websites where a DOI is discoverable. Whether you’re examining journal articles, preprints, or research papers on your favorite academic platform, you’ll have an at-a-glance view of:
Image 2: How the Lean Library Scite feature Smart Citations works to at-a-glance citation notices and context when a researcher is searching via Google or Google Scholar.
This update enhances not only the experience for students and researchers but also the impact libraries have in fostering academic success. With this comprehensive citation and retraction data, libraries can:
Lean Library is designed to bring your library to where your patrons work, study, and research. With the latest Scite integration, the academic library is central to the research journey—while ensuring research integrity is never compromised.
Image 3: How the Lean Library Scite feature quickly identifies articles that have been officially retracted.
Let us show you how we can transform your library’s impact on campus and beyond.
Learn more about Lean Library and our latest features at technologyfromsage.com or reach out to schedule a demo today.
Lean Library Case Study: University of Hertfordshire January 6, 2025
University of Hertfordshire has two vibrant and welcoming Learning Resource Centres, which are the beating heart of their urban campus in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK. Their academic and research collections are digital-first and complemented by a growing collection of fiction and well-being print titles.
With 35,000 students from over 110 countries, and more than 700 career-focused degree options, University of Hertfordshire chose Lean Library to ensure that their students and researchers can easily access the wealth of resources available to them.
What challenges was your library facing before using Lean Library?
“Traditionally we’ve always encouraged students to go directly to the online library to search. However, there’s been a definite shift where students aren’t doing that as much anymore. There are additional tools available now that they can use, and no matter how often we said, “Start here,” they would still choose their own methods.
We noticed a trend, and I don’t think it’s unique to our institution, where the use of library electronic resources was declining. I suspected this wasn’t because students weren’t using content, but rather because some of it was Open Access, meaning they no longer needed to go through the online library to access it. However, when they needed something that wasn’t Open Access, the question became: how were they finding it?
It became about bringing the library to where the user was, facilitating their processes. It became about “let’s make this as easy for them as possible”.
It sounds like bringing the library to patrons was what you were hoping to achieve with Lean Library?
“I guess it was also about raising brand awareness: “We are paying for these resources, this is your library, this is us helping you. We need to make sure that you understand we’re facilitating this process.” The fact that we could colour-code the extension to link to our existing branding—all of those things are really helpful, because it is the library paying for these subscriptions. Each time it pops up, it’s communicating that message to the end user that this is us doing our job—you might not be on campus; you could be anywhere in the world, but this is still us doing our job.
One more thing, it’s also about risk management. There’s the risk if you don’t provide easy routes to access things legally, then potentially people may decide to do things via routes that increase risk to the institution—things that open you up to a cybersecurity risk. It was also part of a risk management strategy: let’s make this as easy as possible so they don’t try and do something that opens their own device to risk or an institutional device to risk.”
University of Hertfordshire have used Lean Library Assist messages to communicate personalized messages to patrons via the Lean Library browser extension when they visit specific websites. The below Assist message lets patrons know they have access to a particular site via their library. This means that University of Hertfordshire’s library branding is displayed in patron’s workflows, marketing the library and increasing awareness with students.
What made Lean Library stand out to you as part of the solution to the challenges we’ve discussed?
“We compared tools, and I advocated strongly for Lean Library. One, it was the branding element—let’s sell ourselves as having this. The second thing is that it builds into other features should we wish to get Lean Library Futures. My thought was if we got this then we could build on it later, if we can demonstrate that there’s a need and it’s working.”
You have fantastic usage results with almost 4,500 engaged users in one month—that’s an increase of over 2,000%. How have you promoted Lean Library to students, and what advice would you give to an institution picking up Lean Library for the first time?
“It’s a multifaceted way of spreading the word. One of the things I think we managed really well was making it easy for people to send out comms—we wrote the copy for them and said “Here you go, this is what Lean Library’s about!” We had emails directly to academics, and added a prompt to download Lean Library to the virtual learning environment that we could then add to any research module, library learning module, or programme page.
At the start of the academic year, we always update the programme page with a welcome from the library team, but now they also have a ‘Download Lean Library’ feature as well. That’s on every single programme in the institution, just to raise awareness.
We talked to our library and computing services staff, making sure every single member of staff would know what Lean Library is when someone comes to talk to them. They could also start downloading it themselves.
We wanted to show that if we gave this to students on a specific programme, we would see a direct link to interlibrary loans. Due of privacy restrictions however, we can’t see too much data. Working with IT colleagues we could show an increase in interlibrary loans from Lean Library during our pilot phase. This helped to demonstrate the value of Lean Library to our colleagues.”
“We asked the academic engagement team: “If you’re teaching, please mention it. Here’s a slide with a video, etc.” We tried to make it as easy for people as possible. We also started to promote it through our direct comms with researchers and added it to their pages on our institutional intranet. This is where researchers go, rather than students.
We also promoted Lean Library at staff-facing events—amazingly, one researcher came back to me and said, “This is making my grant writing so much easier!” I could then put that into all my comms, and she said I could use her name, so that was helpful. That really got buy-in because it was somebody recognisable saying, “this is amazing.”
Then there’s stuff that went out in the all-staff comms. Anything that mentioned research, we would get Lean Library mentioned. It was constantly repeating the message, putting it in lots of places for different members of our student and staff community.”
University of Hertfordshire had on average 4,673 engaged users in November 2024 (pictured on the bar chart below). Back in August 2024, they had an average of 206 engaged users. This shows an increase of over 2,000% from August to November, after a period of heavy Lean Library promotion by University of Hertfordshire.
Have you seen a difference in the way your patrons interact with library collections and services since implementing and rolling out Lean Library?
“We’ve become a bit obsessed with looking at data! We have a dashboard that draws lots of data about interlibrary loans, and we could see that since the start of term our interlibrary loans have gone up 48%. Now not all of those are from Lean Library, but we could see that roughly 19% of our interlibrary loans were coming from Lean Library via an auto-populate route, which represents the highest proportion of all the different routes through which they could have requested an interlibrary loan. That was a really good thing to be able to say, “Hey, this is working!”
We’ve also been looking to see how many searches in PubMed are happening because it’s a free database and we encourage students to use it, and we teach them how to use it. I like to see after I’ve taught a session on PubMed that the number of Lean Library searches goes up. You can definitely see an increase when someone has introduced Lean Library at a session, and so you can see the message is definitely getting through.”
In 2024, University of Hertfordshire library connected students to resources almost 9,000 times via Lean Library via the below routes:
This has saved their patrons just over 2,700 hours in 2024, making accessing the research they need an easier and quicker process. Just over 900 of those hours were from October and November 2024 after heavy promotion efforts for Lean Library from University of Hertfordshire.
Find out more about Lean Library.
If you’d like to hear more or receive a product demo, get in touch.
