Reflections from a 2024 NAHSL Annual Meeting Scholarship Winner
At the NAHSL 2024 annual conference, the presentation by Lauren Fletcher, Laura Haygood, and Kelsey Sawyer, titled From Student Project to Published Manuscript: Improving Methodological Quality in Student-Initiated Reviews, grabbed my interest because my institution is developing evidence synthesis support.
We have faced challenges in determining how to best assist students in understanding methodologies and how to approach reviews as assignments, all while attempting to align with best practices in our profession. This is an area of growth for me, in terms of the number of review support requests received, as well as a space I am working to gain professional skills and knowledge. I was curious to see how Brown University is addressing these challenges. The presenter noted that the majority of review work at their institution is conducted by faculty, with student led reviews representing a small portion. To support assigned review projects, the librarians adopted a harm-reduction approach, focusing on providing methodological support and education to students. This is a challenge we also face; how do we support students working on assigned review projects that perhaps do not match the rigor or guidelines we would recommend? I appreciate that the Brown librarians are focusing on harm-reduction and education, this seems to most student-centric approach. Brown offers revision consultations, which include a pre-consultation step where students share their final product with librarians before meeting. I appreciate this step, because it allows for a deeper level of detail in the following meetings, but it also holds all parties accountable to be prepared for the library consultation.
During the revision consultation, several topics are addressed in a tailored way to the student: methodology, revision of search strategies, the possibility of librarian involvement in the review, and team development and workload. After each consultation, the librarian follows up with an email that includes action items, links, and reference materials. To me, it is important that they have this as an established part of their consultation process, and I will work on developing some standardized language that can be tailored to share after an initial consultation, so that all team members have the same materials to reference throughout the process. Case studies presented demonstrated that librarian involvement was key in producing quality final products, specifically after journal rejections and for the development of student theses.
I look forward to reviewing the authors’ slides to learn more about their future goals. This presentation provided me with actionable items when working with students and ideas on how to better center discussions around improvements to methodologies. It is also affirming to know that other librarians face similar challenges with student led reviews, and that our peers are willing to share their successes and obstacles.
Amalia Dolan
Clinical and Education Librarian
University of Vermont, Dana Health Sciences Library
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