Several Becker Library staff members attended the Medical Library Association (MLA) conference May 26-31 in Seattle and took an active role in sharing their knowledge with colleagues through a variety of presentations. Below are some highlights.
POSTER PRESENTATION
"The Effectiveness of a Hands-On Systematic Review Course: Findings from a Pilot Project"
Becker librarians Angela Hardi, Laura Simon, Lauren Yaeger and Michelle Doering presented a poster along with Susan Fowler (former Becker staff member, now Library Director at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis) on the systematic reviews course they recently piloted.
The librarians identified a need for a systematic review search strategy course that emphasizes hands-on exercises to enhance learning outcomes. Pre- and post-test assessments, along with intermittent quizzes, demonstrated that using a mixed-pedagogy-model that emphasized group and individual hands-on exercises proved effective and practical at teaching librarians how to design systematic review search strategies.
The team would like to thank the first cohort of students for participating in the pilot version of the course, as well as Debbie Thomas, Laura Swofford, Robert Altman, and Marcy Vana (all from Becker Medical Library) for providing additional assistance and support for this project.
The next offering of the systematic reviews course will be August 3-4, 2017. Details and registration information can be found on the Becker Library website.
See the poster on Digital Commons@Becker.
PANEL DISCUSSION
"From Dreaming to Doing: Implementing Research Assessment Services"
Becker librarians Cathy Sarli and Amy Suiter were part of a group that organized a panel discussing how libraries provide research assessment services. The panel was moderated by Kristi Holmes from Northwestern University. Other institutions represented on the panel included Weill Cornell, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Minnesota and the NIH Library. Sarli, along with staff from University of Alberta and Alberta Innovates who could not attend the conference, participated by moderating a live Google doc during the session.
LIGHTNING TALK
"Librarians as Systematic Review Co-Authors: Correlation with Citation Impact Scores"
Amy Suiter of Becker Library and Susan Fowler of Brown School Library presented a five-minute lightning talk titled “Librarians as Systematic Review Co-Authors: Correlation with Citation Impact Scores.” The study hypothesized systematic reviews that included librarians as co-authors would have higher citation impact scores than those that do not have librarian co-authors. In the end, there was no statistically significant difference found in the impact scores, but there was a general trend towards librarian co-authored systematic reviews having higher field-weighted citation impact scores, relative citation ratios and total citations. Becker librarian Angela Hardi also co-authored the presentation.