Welcome to this LibGuide brought to you by the Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group (ESMIG). This guide provides links to resources, tools, scholarly articles and other information to support information professionals conducting and assisting with evidence synthesis. The focus of the guide is on the steps in the evidence synthesis process typically supported by information specialists and librarians including protocol development, source selection, search and retrieval, and information and project management. Also provided are resources related to advising teams on review type selection, problem formulation, screening, critical appraisal, data extraction and synthesis.
If you have questions or suggestions about this guide, please contact the current ESMIG co-conveners Aimee Sgourakis Jenkins (aimees@pitt.edu).or Amy Riegelman (aspringe@umn.edu).
This guide will be reviewed and updated on an annual basis.
The ACRL Evidence Synthesis Methods - Interest Group (ESM-IG) was created to promote and develop competencies related to supporting and participating in evidence synthesis, which includes systematic reviews, scoping reviews, meta-analysis and other types.
We do this in the form of recurring programming such as tool demos and journal clubs, an on-demand peer mentorship program, sharing resources, and through the discussion forum on ALA Connect.
Our next meeting will be held on October 31st at 1PM ET. Sarah Young, a librarian at Carnegie Mellon University and former Co-Convener of ESMIG, will be doing some information sharing about the Open Learning Initiative and Campbell collaboration online course entitled “Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis” and providing feedback on her experience at the recent Cochrane Colloquium which was held in London last month.
On November 21st at 1PM ET, Amy Riegelman will be leading a journal club discussion about the following article:
Jarvis, C., Gregory, J. M., Mortensen-Hayes, A., & McFarland, M. (2021). Borrowing trouble? The impact of a systematic review service on interlibrary loan borrowing in an academic health sciences library. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 109(1), 84.
Sign up to lead a journal club session: If you would like to facilitate a journal club session, or have any suggestions for articles or tool demonstrations that you would like us to discuss during journal club, please submit them at this form.
If you are curious about what articles we have already discussed in previous journal club sessions, see the full list here.
This on-demand program was created to pair librarians who are participating on their first or second evidence synthesis review as a co-author with experienced librarians for support. The number of hours of mentorship provided should not exceed 10 hours, unless agreed upon by the mentor. We will attempt to pair all mentee applications with a mentor within 7-10 days, however a match is not guaranteed. For further details about the mentorship program see this program description.
Use this form to sign up as a mentor. In order to be eligible as a mentor, you must have experience participating in evidence synthesis reviews as a co-author. As part of the sign-up process, you will be asked to provide citations to 2 published evidence synthesis articles or review protocols on which you were a co-author.
Use this form to submit your application as a mentee. To be eligible, you must:
If you have any questions about this guide, please contact the current ACRL Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group Convener (currently, Aimee Jenkins)
If you have suggestions of resources for this guide, please fill out this suggestion form. Suggestions will be considered for inclusion by the LibGuide working group.
