Reading Lists: Best Practice Tips for Academic Staff

As the start of a new academic year approaches, we wanted to share some advice from the library for creating or updating reading lists! To support this, library staff will be running training sessions on the Leganto reading list platform in late August 2026. Dates, times, and booking information for these sessions are available in Libcal.

Effective reading lists are more than a collection of resources, as they can:

• Help students manage their workload.
• Provide a structured route through relevant literature.
• Support student engagement with key concepts explored throughout a module.

Whether you are creating a brand-new list or reviewing an existing one, these simple tips will help you make the most of your reading lists.

Set Manageable Expectations

It can be tempting to include every potentially relevant resource that you’ve found, but a focused reading list will often provide a clearer and more manageable learning experience for students. As a rough guide, limiting a list to a maximum of 100 items will greatly improve its usability, particularly for users of accessibility tools such as screen readers.

Instead of providing an exhaustive list of resources, consider directing students to Library Search to start their own research. In this way, keeping your list to a realistic length will encourage readers to carry out their own searches and find further material.

Structure Resources around Learning

Even if it is a more manageable length, an unstructured list can initially be overwhelming. Our reading lists can be structured using sections and tags to help you arrange and prioritise the resources in your list.

Organising resources into sections – which can be based on weeks, units, or topics – will allow students to navigate easily to relevant resources as they work through the module content. Within these sections, using tags to mark resources as ‘Essential’ or ‘Recommended’ will make your list more user-friendly, by helping students to identify the key resources at each stage of their learning.

Think beyond Books

One of the most common misconceptions about Reading Lists is that they are only for books. In fact, our Reading Lists can contain more than fifty different resource types, including journal articles, videos, maps, transcripts, or podcasts.

Including a variety of formats – such as links to Box of Broadcasts, sound recordings, or YouTube videos – not only makes your reading list more engaging, but can also help to make the list more accessible.

Review and Refresh

It is good practice to review your list yearly to check on any updated editions, add emerging research, and review the list’s structure and tags. As academic publishing can change quickly, access to the most up-to-date resources and perspectives is important for students.

The reading list tool embedded in your module will roll over when Moodle refreshes*, so you can continue to work with the previous year’s list. Conducting an annual review of any reading lists linked to your ongoing modules will ensure they remain relevant, accurate, and aligned with your learning outcomes.

* Please note, one exception to this automatic roll over is cross-listed modules (those with an XL code). For these, please contact your subject librarian to assist with the rollover of your reading list.

Work with the Library

Remember, the library is available to you at every stage of the reading list process. Library staff can:

• Check and update links to ensure resources are accessible.
• Purchase recommended materials where appropriate. You can add resources not currently available via the library to your list, and we will investigate whether purchase is possible.
• Advise on alternative options when electronic formats are unavailable or we cannot supply sufficient licences for access.
• Where possible, support digitisation requests through the Digital Extracts Service to make a book chapter or journal article available online through the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA).

To ensure that library staff have time to investigate purchase or alternative access options if needed, please submit any reading lists for review four weeks before the start of trimester.

Not just for Teaching

Lastly, you can also use reading lists to organise resources outside of teaching for your modules. All staff and students have access to the reading lists platform, called Leganto. You can use this platform to create a journal club, set up a tutor reading group or even just to organise your own personal list of resources – and you don’t have to worry about this list being too long!

For example, get inspired by this list of suggested Summer Reading from the library, or take a moment to explore our Wellbeing Collection list.

Find Out More

For even more information on reading lists, please go to our Reading Lists LibGuide, which provides instructions and guidance for every step of the process. Or, as mentioned at the start of this post, you can attend one our upcoming workshops found on Libcal.

Finally, if you need any further support or have any questions about this topic, remember the library is here to help!

By Anna Langdon