By Alice Cann, Academic Liaison Librarian for Business at Brunel University London
This is the second in a series of blog posts reporting on an Evidence Synthesis Institute (ESI) delivered by the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and Carnegie Mellon University. These posts expand on a post originally on Alice’s Researcher Librarian blog.
Business librarian
As mentioned in my previous post, exploring what evidence synthesis is, and people’s understanding of systematic reviews, is a passion for me. In my role as a business librarian at a UK university I have been increasingly asked for support, especially from doctoral researchers, in searching for systematic reviews. Until recently I usually limited my guidance to standard literature searching and recommending further reading.
Need for social sciences systematic review support
In recent years our Graduate School investigated the needs of business and engineering researchers doing systematic literature reviews and reporting confusion on attending training run by our life sciences librarian. There were elements of the research method they were not familiar with, and did not know whether they should be following, such as:
- which frameworks they should be using,
- whether and where they should publish a review protocol,
- and how they should report their literature search.
Approaches for developing systematic review knowledge
While the highlighted demand for systematic review guidance led to me increasing the systematic search content in other training, I needed to develop my knowledge and skills. I have done and am aiming to continue doing this in various ways.
Through research
- I have been developing ideas for a research project looking into the use of systematic reviews by doctoral researchers, and what librarians can do increase their support and participate in this area.
- I share that I am keen to participate with others on funded systematic review projects, to improve the information seeking and reporting aspects of research, and to develop my skills beyond theory. My ultimate hope is for staffed Evidence Synthesis services to become more prevalent in universities internationally, including in the UK.
Through reading and attending training
- An article by Tranfield, Denyer, and Smart (2003) was recommended by academics in our business school. While this article is old, it is a good explanation of the emergence of systematic reviews within management research, and reading and analysing it was instrumental in my development. I continued to read and synthesise key articles, such as Grant and Booth (2009), when working on an unsuccessful application for research funding.
- I have been working through the Campbell/Carnegie Mellon Systematic reviews and meta-analysis online course. My progress in this so far has been extremely useful, both improving my search ability, and developing my knowledge of other stages in systematic reviews.
- There are many opportunities to attend online seminars on the topic – an initiative to highlight particularly, and which has had a big take-up among librarians, is the Systematic Review Conversations programme run by Lancaster University Library.
Through teaching and supporting and working with others
- I am part of the Business Librarians Association Systematic Reviews working group, and have been learning from discussions and training development with other librarians who receive similar requests for support.
- People across all departments at my university can attend drop-ins or book appointments with any librarian, and we have a high number of health sciences students asking for support with systematic and scoping reviews (or their interpretation of these). As I have become more knowledgeable about systematic searching and reporting, these consultations have become more complex, and I have learnt from the questions students bring to me.
- I have been asked by a project lead to train research assistants recruited to work on a systematic review project. While I have a developed perspective on how I would run this training now (following attendance at the Evidence Synthesis Institute), this was useful at the time for their understanding and mine.
The above methods have all had value, but have been significantly added to through my training in the Evidence Synthesis Institute, which I will discuss in detail in my next post.
References
Grant, M.J. & Booth, A. (2009) “A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies”, Health Information and Libraries Journal, 26(2), pp. 91-108.
Tranfield, D., Denyer, D. and Smart, P. (2003) ‘Towards a methodology for developing evidence-informed management knowledge by means of systematic review’, British Journal of Management, 14(3), pp. 207-222