Thinking through Library Review: Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review at Nottingham Trent University (Dorothy Atherton, John Harral and Helen Adey, Nottingham Trent University) This session will describe the evolution of list review workflows at Nottingham Trent, covering the early days of Excel spreadsheets, the origins of the concept of Stages, the challenges of workflow change management and NTU's initial findings from trialling the new software. There will be a short demonstration of the functionality of Stages followed by NTU's current thinking on ways to enhance and improve the List review process.

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Enhancing life-long learning, teaching and research through
information resources and services

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Dorothy Atherton, Services Manager - Resource Acquisitions and Supply
John Harral, Senior Library Assistant - Monograph Acquisitions
Helen Adey, Resource Acquisitions and Supply Team Manager
Thinking through Library Review:
Spreadsheets, Stages and List Review
at Nottingham Trent

3. In the
beginning………
..
• RLMS rolled out in August 2010
• Carrot and stick approach to ensure academic engagement
• Single route for recommending items for acquisition
• Management of process
– Behind scenes workflows which would encompass all processes
– Each step involved a different team and a different process
– NO tracking, audit log, workflow within Talis Aspire
• Choice – radical change to process or adapt?
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4. Each of our lists had to go on a journey:
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ALT
• Sanity
Check
• Mark up
exceptions
• Mark up
items for
attention of
correct
team
Acquisitions
Team
• Look for e-
availability
• Purchase
appropriate
format and
quantity
• Update
RLMS and
LMS in
parallel
Digitisation
Team
• Transfer
details to
PackTracker
• Begin
Processing
• Edit RLMS
Link Checking
Team
• Improve
quality of
descriptive
metadata
• Update
electronic
links to be
persistent
• Ensure
access
available
from any
location

5. Review Workflow tracking: the pros
•Workflows were complex, but suited our needs
•In house solution = Spreadsheets
– Evolved and developed to suit our processes
– Provided an audit trail
– Allowed tracking and notes
– Archived to refer back to as necessary
– Clear workflow
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6. Review Workflow tracking: the cons
• Only a snapshot
• Difficult to deal with last minute changes
• Lots of cutting and pasting
• Working with lots of windows open
• Only one person could work on a sheet at a time
• Had to maintain it ourselves – risks of single person dependencies
• File storage
• Not ideal to work outside our preferred system
So – began to think about changes
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7. What did we want?
•Ability to work within Aspire to:
– Track easily and quickly where a list is
– Provide a clear audit trail for each item
on each list
•In addition:
– Confirm achievement of KPIs (date stamps)
– Provide accurate information across teams
•Needed to be flexible enough to work across all
institutions
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8. Did we achieve what we wanted?  
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Ability to work within Aspire 
Get rid of spreadsheets 
Track easily and quickly where a list is 
Provide accurate information across teams ?
Provide a clear audit trail for each item on each list 
Confirm achievement of KPIs (date stamps) 
Flexibility across institutions 

9. Moving to Stages - a brief demo.
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• Testing out Stages has generated further ideas for how we’d like to
work in future
• Would like to work with Talis and User Group community to
continue conversations about the List Review process and
Acquisitions workflows
• Email discussion from March 2013 on LIS-TALIS-ASPIRE suggests
this is an area of interest to many Aspire Users
• Needs to overlap with work of the developer group to see what is
possible
• A few thoughts and starters for 10…..
So where do we go from here?

11. Thoughts / starters for 10…….(1)
• Instead of whole list review, we’re thinking about the following:
A system which:
Directs resources to the work that is required, rather than
checking whole lists – lots of redundant effort
Provides reports / daily logs showing changes to lists broken
down by new items added to lists? / Items that have been
edited? / updated?
Breaks down reports in a way that identifies the task and its
owner e.g. if new and not linked to the catalogue it goes to
Acquisitions…...
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12. Thoughts / starters for 10…….(2)
A system which:
Provides a mechanism for showing that a task has been
completed and can come off the next daily report
Incorporates time / date stamping functionality for KPI reporting
and monitoring purposes
Allows use of Stages for redirecting tasks within the workflow
e.g. Link checkers may need to pass back to Digitisation stage
or to Acquisitions and vice versa
Rather than try and build into Aspire purchasing rules / formula
approach to acquisition, use Aspire to highlight what work needs
doing.
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13. Any thoughts / questions?
• helen.adey@ntu.ac.uk
• dorothy.atherton@ntu.ac.uk
• john.harral@ntu.ac.uk
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