Aileen McCrillis

Objective: While many librarians have been asked to participate in systematic reviews with researchers, often these researchers are not familiar with the systematic review process or the appropriate role for librarians. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and barriers that librarians face when collaborating on systematic reviews. To take a wider view of the whole process of collaborating on systematic reviews, the authors deliberately focused on interpersonal and methodological issues other than searching itself.Methods: To characterize the biggest challenges that librarians face while collaborating on systematic review projects, we used a web-based survey. The thirteen-item survey included seventeen challenges grouped into two categories: methodological and interpersonal. Participants were required to indicate the frequency and difficulty of the challenges listed. Open-ended questions allowed survey participants to describe challenges not listed in the survey and to describe strategies used to overcome challenges.Results: Of the 17 challenges listed in the survey, 8 were reported as common by over 40% of respondents. These included methodological issues around having too broad or narrow research questions, lacking eligibility criteria, having unclear research questions, and not following established methods. The remaining challenges were interpersonal, including issues around student-led projects and the size of the research team. Of the top 8 most frequent challenges, 5 were also ranked as most difficult to handle. Open-ended responses underscored many of the challenges included in the survey and revealed several additional challenges.Conclusions: These results suggest that the most frequent and challenging issues relate to development of the research question and general communication with team members. Clear protocols for collaboration on systematic reviews, as well as a culture of mentorship, can help librarians prevent and address these challenges. This article has been approved for the Medical Library Association’s Independent Reading Program.

Mobile devices are becoming profoundly important tools for finding and accessing information in medicine; however, accessing institution-licensed content on mobile devices can be problematic. An assessment was performed of selected library systems, publisher platforms, and licensed information resources for compatibility with several types of smartphones and tablets. The majority of products assessed had some form of mobile compatibility, but mobile compatibility varied among product categories and the form of mobile compatibility varied among products. This assessment reveals that users of academic health sciences libraries may have an incongruent user experience on mobile devices due to the diversity of digital platforms.

This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (Intervention). The objectives are as follows: The objective of this review is to compare the effects of regional versus general anaesthesia on cognitive function after procedures other than cardiac surgery or neurosurgery in adult and in paediatric patients.

The research obtained information to plan data-related products and services.Biomedical researchers in an academic medical center were selected using purposive sampling and interviewed using open-ended questions based on a literature review. Interviews ...

BackgroundPharmacologic androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is widely used to treat prostate cancer. Observational studies suggest ADT is associated with cardiovascular disease and its risk factors; however, such studies may be subject to bias. Our objective was to evaluate the effect of ADT on cardiovascular disease risk factors using data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Materials and methodsWe conducted a systematic review using MEDLINE and MEDLINE In-Process (1950-June 2013), EMBASE (1974-June 2013) and Web of Science (1900-June 2013) for all RCTs in men with prostate cancer that compared pharmacologic ADT (i.e. use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist or antagonist) with a group that did not receive ADT and reported data on cardiovascular disease risk factors including blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, fibrinogen, biomarkers of insulin sensitivity, adiposity and C-reactive protein. We also searched for ongoing or unpublished trials. This study was registered at the PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews (CRD42013005035). ResultsOf the 3272 unique publications identified in our systematic review, we did not identify a single RCT that reported data on any cardiovascular disease risk factor. We were unable to locate unreported data from corresponding authors or study sponsors. ConclusionsThere is a lack of published, reliable evidence describing the effects of ADT on cardiovascular disease risk factors. RCTs have likely collected data on these risk factors as part of routine study monitoring; however, these data have not been published. To understand the effect of ADT on cardiovascular morbidity, these data must be made available to the scientific community.

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) in health sciences librarians (HSLs) who have direct contact with traumatized individuals and their families.A twenty-five-item survey and the Secondary Traumatic ...

INTRODUCTION This paper describes the development of the New York University Health Sciences Library’s Faculty Bibliography. DESCRIPTION Since 2000, the NYU Health Sciences Library’s Faculty Bibliography project has systematically tracked publications of the NYU School of Medicine faculty. The project has grown to a significant institutional service making prominent contributions to the School of Medicine’s public web presence and to advanced productivity metrics. Migrating from Gopher to EndNote to MySQL, the Faculty Bibliography harvests data from multiple abstracting and indexing resources and uses sophisticated quality assurance methodologies. At present the Faculty Bibliography tracks over 228,000 publications of well over 13,000 faculty, including faculties of the NYU Colleges of Dentistry and Nursing. Both technical and social engineering aspects of the project’s success are discussed; the project’s role in deepening professional contact between the Library, clinical and research faculty, and School administration is stressed. NEXT STEPS The Library currently envisions broadening coverage to include faculty engaged in scientific and medical publishing from other schools and colleges at NYU. We also anticipate significant improvements in the project’s methodology once the ORCID initiative takes root.

With nearly all library resources and services delivered digitally, librarians working for the New York University Health Sciences Library struggled with maintaining awareness of changing user needs, understanding barriers faced in using library resources and services, and determining knowledge management challenges across the organization. A liaison program was created to provide opportunities for librarians to meaningfully engage with users. The program was directed toward a subset of high-priority user groups to provide focused engagement with these users. Responsibility for providing routine reference service was reduced for liaison librarians to provide maximum time to engage with their assigned user communities.