2020 Spring Forum: Jane Falconer

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.

LSHTM Systematic Review Support: Past, Present and Future

In the past three years, the support provided to systematic reviewers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) by library staff has been transformed. The impetus behind this was an internal review of LSHTM-authored reviews which found a major issue with reporting and search standards. This was a surprise, given LSHTM’s emphasis on excellence in research, and the expertise on systematic review methodology amongst staff. This presentation describes how this review was conducted before describing the successes and failures in our subsequent support for reviewers. Like our users, we aim to provide an evidence-based service, so we have tried to follow best-practice, where available. The past three years has seen an update and expansion of our face-to-face and online training, improved publicity for individual support, introduction of peer-review of searches using the PRESS guidance and introduction of sub-contracting of trained library staff to conduct searches. The presentation ends with an insight into my future plans for the service.

Biography: Jane Falconer

Jane has been a medical librarian for over 20 years, working in the charitable sector, NHS and HE. She currently leads on user-facing service provision from the Library & Archives Service at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She has also been sub-contracted to provide information specialist skills to a number of systematic reviews including updates for the Cochrane Injuries Group, reviews to inform WHO guidance and NIHR reports.