How to make a reading list for students and share it with a class

A reading list is the one document every student on a module receives, and many are built the same way: last year's list, pasted forward, alphabetical, with nothing to say which items matter. This guide shows how to make a reading list for students that a whole class or cohort will use: its length, its labels, editions and access, and upkeep.

EdCitation publishes it. Four university libraries' reading list policies and guides, and four published studies of reading lists, were read at source on 23 September 2026. Where our tools do a step, the guide says so: Find sources gathers readings by topic or by the claim a session turns on, Cite a source sets each one in the course's style from the publisher's record, and a free EdCitation account keeps the list and shares it with the class.

What makes a good reading list for students?

A good reading list is short enough to finish, divided by week or topic, labelled by importance, annotated with what each item is for, available to every student, and dated. Each of those comes out of what students have said about the lists they were given.

What students say they use

McGuinn et al. (2017) surveyed students at the University of Huddersfield about its online reading lists and received 772 replies. 87.4% found their lists useful; 32.8% used them a lot and 43.8% sometimes. They valued lists divided into weekly reading, and sections headed essential, recommended and background. Among the changes they asked for were more headings and a short note from the tutor on what each item was for, and one student wrote that lists were added to but "rarely pruned back".

Brewerton (2014) analysed the free-text answers to a Loughborough University survey of 1,106 students, 1,017 of whom commented on their reading lists. Length drew more comments than anything else, and students asked, as at Huddersfield, for a line on why each book was there. Brewerton concludes that students put more weight on reading lists than many lecturers do.

Long lists and short ones

Lists differ enormously by subject. At Loughborough, engineering lists averaged 6 items, the longest 144, while arts and social sciences lists averaged 63, the longest 1,479 (Brewerton, 2014). Length is not load, the paper adds: six whole books can ask more than a long list of chapters and articles. So the cure for a long list is often structure: break it by week or topic, and name the chapter rather than the book. Siddall (2016) adds that a list holding everything on a subject overwhelms and leaves students nothing to find for themselves; a master's list can be shorter than a first-year one.

How do I mark essential and further reading?

Choose two or three labels, say at the top of the list what each one asks of the student, and keep the essential set small. University libraries use similar labels with different limits, and your own library's scheme should win, because it decides how many copies are bought.

The first four rows come from each library's own policy or guide (Aston University, n.d.; University of Dundee, 2026; Aberystwyth University, 2022; University of Southampton, 2026).

Labels lecturers read as "skip this"

Siddall (2016) asked lecturers at the University of Northampton, in sessions run between 2013 and 2015, to write down what ten common labels would mean to a student; 32 of the 47 participants handed in answers. "Core", "essential" and "recommended" were read consistently and positively. "Suggested", "useful" and "optional" were read as permission to skip, and "indicative" had no agreed meaning at all. The paper advises using "core" or "essential" but not both unless the list explains the difference, and keeping "set" for reading expected before a session.

Say what each label means

Define your labels in a line at the top: essential means read before the session, further means read for the assignment or for depth. Brewerton (2014) recommends the same, a short statement of what the list is for. Then annotate each item with a chapter, a page range or the reason it is there; a Huddersfield student asked to be told which chapters mattered rather than handed a whole book (McGuinn et al., 2017).

How do I choose editions and make sure every student can get the reading?

Name an edition only when it matters, name the chapter or pages, and before the list goes out, check that every essential item can be had by every student, in enough copies or online.

Editions

Aberystwyth, Aston and Dundee all buy the latest edition unless the list asks for another, and Dundee wants a teaching reason for an older one. So name the edition only where your page references depend on it. An ISBN belongs to one edition and format, so building the reference from the ISBN of the edition you teach, as Cite a source does, keeps list and reference in step.

Copies, chapters and ebooks

Access takes time. Dundee asks for six weeks for print books to arrive, and will digitise one chapter or 10% of a book, whichever is greater, within copyright law. Aston buys digital first, does not routinely buy out-of-print books, and negotiates over any print book above £150 or digital item above £300. Students notice the gaps: at Huddersfield, 61% of the comments about too few books were about missing ebooks (McGuinn et al., 2017).

An open access article is the easiest reading to guarantee, because every student can open it without a library login. Aston asks for open access publications and open educational resources where possible, and the open access filter in EdCitation's Find sources returns only those.

Accessible formats and a range of voices

Dundee's library advises on accessible formats for students with qualifying disabilities, and Aston buys at least one print copy of essential reading partly for accessibility. Aston also asks for a well-rounded range of viewpoints. Schucan Bird and Pitman (2020) audited two modules' lists at a research-intensive British university. On the science list, 70% of the authors were men, while the institution's biosciences students were 67% women; on the social science list, 99% of the authors were at universities in Europe, North America or Australasia. Both lists looked more like the academic staff than the students.

How do I keep a reading list current?

Review the list once a year before the module runs, republish it even when nothing changed, put the date of the review at the top, and take items off as well as putting them on.

Aston expects every list to be reviewed at least annually and republished each year even without changes, and Dundee expects module leaders to update theirs, usually annually. Deadlines come early: Aberystwyth's policy, last reviewed in 2022, sets 31 July for first-semester modules, 30 November for the second semester and 30 June for distance learning.

Show the date

Students at Loughborough complained that their lists were out of date, yet the reading list system showed that 86.5% had been updated within a year and 59% within the last month (Brewerton, 2014). A list that looks old is read as old. One line at the top, such as "Reviewed September 2026", answers the complaint before it is made.

Check that each paper still stands

A paper can be retracted after it goes on a list, and a reference copied forward for years collects errors. Once a year, paste the list into EdCitation's Verify references: each entry comes back verified, doubtful (shown as "check this") or not found, retracted papers are flagged, and an entry that could not be checked is never reported as not found. Keep older works that shaped the field, and say why, or students may dismiss them as out of date (Brewerton, 2014).

How do I build a course reading list, step by step?

Start from the teaching plan, not from last year's list.

1. Write down the weeks, and the question or claim each session turns on.
2. Search each week in EdCitation's Find sources, which searches about 300 million published works, by topic or by pasting the claim as a sentence. Narrow by kind of source (a review article, a book chapter), by years and by open access.
3. Bookmark the candidates into the reading list on a free account.
4. Read and choose, keeping the essential set within your library's limit.
5. Build each reference from its DOI or ISBN with Cite a source, in the course's style: APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver. Tag it with its week and its label; a reference can carry more than one tag, and filtering by one tag shows that week's list.
6. Annotate with the chapter or pages and one line on why.
7. Send the list to the library the way your university asks, before its deadline.
8. Check the finished list with Verify references.
9. Share it from the Team page, or download it as a Word file for the learning platform.
10. Put next year's review in your diary.

What does Find sources return for a real topic?

A search run for this guide on 23 September 2026, on the words retrieval practice classroom, returned 74,238 works. First came a 2021 systematic review of classroom studies by Agarwal, Nunes and Blunt in Educational Psychology Review, marked open access, then Roediger and Butler's review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, not open access. Of the first 100 results, 64 were open access, 6 were reviews, 3 were book chapters and 1 was a book.

With three filters set (review articles, 2016 onwards, open access only), the same words returned 2,628 works, led by the Agarwal review and a review by McDermott in Annual Review of Psychology. The list still needs a reader: among the first twelve were reviews of flipped classrooms and of artificial intelligence in higher education, near the topic but not on it. A search by claim was tried too, but the index did not answer, so none is shown.

The year in the listing and the year in the reference

The search listing gave Roediger and Butler's review as 2010. Built from its DOI in Cite a source, the reference carries January 2011, volume 15, issue 1, pages 20 to 27, as the publisher's record has them; McDermott's moved from 2020 to 2021 the same way. A list built from the record matches the journal's own page.

One week of the list, worked through

APA 7 puts titles in reference entries in sentence case even when the original used title case (American Psychological Association, 2022), and Cite a source set the Agarwal and McDermott titles that way from their records, so the entries below stand as it gave them.

Week 4: Retrieval practice. Essential: read before the seminar. Further: read for the essay.

Essential

• Agarwal, P. K., Nunes, L. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2021). Retrieval practice consistently benefits student learning: A systematic review of applied research in schools and classrooms. Educational Psychology Review, 33(4), 1409–1453. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09595-9
  Open access. Reviews 50 classroom experiments.

Further

• McDermott, K. B. (2021). Practicing retrieval facilitates learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 72(1), 609–633. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010419-051019
  Open access.
• Roediger, H. L., III, & Butler, A. C. (2011). The critical role of retrieval practice in long-term retention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 20–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2010.09.003
  Through the library login.

Why build the list in EdCitation?

EdCitation is the best tool for building a reading list whose references are right, because it looks each one up in the publisher's record and never writes one: that is why the Roediger and Butler entry above carries 2011 where the search listing said 2010. Find sources, Cite a source and Verify references are free and need no account. A free account keeps the reading list and your reference lists. Each reference can be tagged, filtered by tag and set in its own style, and a list copies with its italics and downloads as Word, BibTeX or RIS.

Sharing with the class

The Team page invites people by email to see a reading list or a reference list, and each person creates a free account to open it. Sharing one reference list in a group project shows sharing from the students' side, and keeping references from course to course shows how a student's own list outlives the module.

Set books, and a whole department

For set textbooks, the Library is a catalogue of textbooks and scholarly books searched by discipline, kind of book, language and year, where a student can buy a paid copy, find one in a library nearby, or keep it in My Books. With Max, at $24 a month, it opens more than 5 million books to read and borrow, all in one place: a collection EdCitation compiled for students and readers. A department that wants every student covered can take an Institution licence, with integration into the LMS and sign-in, white label, training and one invoice.

EdCitation orders nothing for your library, so where the library buys from a reading list system, such as the Talis Aspire system Aston uses, the list still goes there. It never writes any part of a student's paper. For the class on checking sources, a 40-minute lesson plan is ready, and every EdCitation tool for instructors sets out the rest.

Quick questions

How many items should be essential on a reading list?

Few. Aston's policy suggests one to five for a 15-credit module and Dundee's at most ten; the rest go under recommended or further reading, so the library can buy enough copies of what everyone must read.

What is the difference between essential and further reading?

Essential reading is what every student must read to follow the module, usually before a session; further reading deepens a topic or supports an assignment. Define both at the top of the list, because even lecturers read labels such as "suggested" and "optional" as permission to skip (Siddall, 2016).

How do I share a reading list with a whole class?

Keep one copy you maintain, and send it where the class will open it. In EdCitation, build the list with Find sources and Cite a source; the Team page then invites people by email to see it, each creating a free account, and the list downloads as a Word file for the learning platform.

How often should a module reading list be updated?

At least once a year, before the module runs; Aston asks for every list to be republished yearly even when unchanged. A review date at the top shows students the list is current.

Is there a course reading list tool that checks the references?

Yes. EdCitation finds the readings, builds each reference from the publisher's record in six styles, and checks the finished list with Verify references, which flags retracted papers. All three are free with no account, and a free account keeps and shares the list.

References

• Aberystwyth University. (2022). Reading list policy. https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/about-us/corporate-information/policies/lib/reading-list-policy/
• American Psychological Association. (2022). Sentence case capitalization. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/capitalization/sentence-case
• Aston University. (n.d.). University reading list policy (AU-LTC-22-5266-A) [PDF]. https://www.aston.ac.uk/sites/default/files/AU-LTC-22-5266-A%20-%20Reading%20List%20Policy.pdf
• Brewerton, G. (2014). Implications of student and lecturer qualitative views on reading lists: A case study at Loughborough University, UK. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 20(1), 78–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614533.2013.864688
• McGuinn, K., Stone, G., Sharman, A., & Davison, E. (2017). Student reading lists: Evaluating the student experience at the University of Huddersfield. The Electronic Library, 35(2), 322–332. https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-12-2015-0252
• Schucan Bird, K., & Pitman, L. (2020). How diverse is your reading list? Exploring issues of representation and decolonisation in the UK. Higher Education, 79(5), 903–920. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00446-9
• Siddall, G. (2016). University academics' perceptions of reading list labels. New Library World, 117(7/8), 440–448. https://doi.org/10.1108/NLW-02-2016-0012
• University of Dundee. (2026, January 23). Reading and resource list policy. https://www.dundee.ac.uk/corporate-information/reading-and-resource-list-policy
• University of Southampton. (2026, April 8). Reading list: Best practice guide. University of Southampton Library. https://library.soton.ac.uk/reading-list-best-practice-guide