2020 Spring Forum: Andra Fry & Kevin Wilson

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The 2020 UHMLG Spring Forum is focusing on getting involved with systematic reviews. With six presentations, it promises to be an interesting and informative day. With the opportunity to network with colleagues from across the HE and NHS sectors, it’s a great value event for all health and medical librarians.

Measuring the systematic reviews support provided by Librarians/Information Specialists at other Higher Education institutions

Over the last few years, our Liaison team at LSE Library has experienced an increase in the number of requests to advise or collaborate on systematic reviews. As this was not a service we offered, the support we have been able to provide has been limited.

Due to concerns on the implications of this support not being available, our team has been asked to investigate the feasibility of setting up a formalised service. In July-August 2019, we conducted a comprehensive survey aiming to identify the level of systematic reviews support provided by Librarians or Information Specialists at other Higher Education institutions. The survey covered areas such as the extent to which they provided support for systematic reviews, their staffing capacity, the volume of reviews supported, and what benefits and challenges they experienced as a result. This was circulated for a period of three weeks to six health and systematic reviews groups.

We received 112 responses and were surprised to discover that many others were in a similar situation to us. We are excited by the amount of interest in this area and would love to share with you what we have learnt from the survey. Please join us for this talk to also find out what we decided to do at LSE Library.

Biographies

Andra Fry, Academic Support Librarian, LSE Library, London School of Economics

As a Health Policy Librarian, Andra has been teaching literature searching for systematic reviews for the last three years and has so far worked on five systematic reviews.

Kevin Wilson, Academic Liaison and Collection Development Manager, LSE Library, London School of Economics

Kevin leads the liaison team at LSE and is keen to increase the team’s impact on research and teaching taking place at LSE. Kevin is also working to support decolonisation initiatives at LSE and beyond.

Andra and Kevin co-led the Planning a Systematic Reviews Service project at LSE Library.