ICML 2009: Continuing Education: The Librarian's role in supporting systematic reviews

Presenter/s: Ms Carol Lefebrve, Senior Information Specialist, UK Cochrane Centre, National Institute for Health Research

Biography: Carol Lefebvre is the Senior Information Specialist at the UK Cochrane Centre where she has worked since 1992. Previously she was Deputy Librarian at the University of Oxford Medical School library.
She co-ordinates the identification of reports of trials for inclusion in CENTRAL in The Cochrane Library and facilitates the inclusion of these trials in Cochrane reviews by supporting Trials Search Co-ordinators in the various Cochrane Review Groups.
She was Principal Investigator on two European Union-funded projects involving six other Cochrane Centres, to identify reports of trials by handsearching European journals. She also initiated the systematic searching of MEDLINE and EMBASE for all reports of trials.
Her research interests include improving the design of search strategies to identify reports of trials and systematic reviews. She designed the original Cochrane Highly Sensitive Search Strategy for identifying reports of randomized trials in MEDLINE, which has recently been revised using objective statistical analysis techniques. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals of the UK.

Session: This will be a discussion-based workshop and will cover the following topics:

• How does supporting systematic reviews differ from other librarian support?
• Designing search strategies for systematic reviews in collaboration with review authors
• Hints and tips on principles, methods and sources
• Running systematic review searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library and other databases
• Use of methodological search filters
• Identifying ongoing and unpublished studies
• Use of bibliographic software
• Drafting the search strategy sections for the published review
• Updating the searches