Faculty Perceptions of Loughborough's Online Reading List System (LORLS) at Dublin Business School (DBS)
Authors
Musto, Lara
O'Neill, Marie
Issue Date
2016
Degree
Publisher
Routledge
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
This article explores faculty perceptions of Loughborough’s Online Reading List System (LORLS) at Dublin Business School (DBS), where it was installed in 2014. Data generated by the study will inform, advocacy, marketing and training initiatives to promote the platform. LORLS provides library users with access to online reading lists with live links to library catalogue records, e-books, e-journal articles, e-journals titles and websites. A mixed methods research style, comprising qualitative and quantitative approaches was carried out for the purposes of this study. Data was gathered from full-time and part-time lecturers from the Business, Law and Arts faculties. The study concludes with a number of deductive and inductive findings. The first is that although DBS faculty are highly predisposed to using LORLS, there are a number of variables that impact its use. Non-arts faculty who were teaching part-time and for a shorter period of time tended not to be as aware of LORLS. These variables must be considered in the context of advocacy, marketing and training initiatives in relation to LORLS implementation. Grounded theory analysis of the focus group data also revealed that faculty would like LORLS to have greater interoperability with the virtual learning environment (VLE) Moodle which is used at DBS. A key output of the study is a LORLS Process Implementation Chart for proposed inclusion on the LORLS developers’ implementation blog to assist other organisations with LORLS adoption. The chart synthesises the key findings of the literature review and of the data generated in this study. Author keywords: Reading List Management Systems, reading lists, Higher Education, reading strategies, resource lists