Top tips on starting a blog

Would you like to start a blog for your library in the new year? It's a great way to promote your services and connect with fellow libraries and librarians around the world.

Setting up a blog needn't be daunting and Starr Sackstein's post on how she started is a very, encouraging read.

We also love this list by Cochrane on why blogging is good for sharing evidence and for those who like a wider read, check out this list of articles on science blogging at Citeulike.org.

Here are five top tips from us too!

1. Keep your layout simple, so that it is easy to navigate.
2. Always include an About and Contact page. These are two of the most popular pages as everyone wants to know what your blog is about and how to contact you.
3. Blog regularly to keep your readers coming back for more. A blogging schedule is an excellent way to manage this.
4. Blog posts needn't be an essay. In fact, shorter posts are more likely to be read.
5. Readers love links to external resources, so do include them as much as possible.

Happy blogging and don't forget to come say hi to us on Twitter too!

Rapid Reviews - sources, articles and background information

There's a wealth of information out there on rapid reviews, so we thought we'd put a list together of some useful sources, articles and background information that we've found.

Rapid.Reviews.info

Reviews: Rapid! Rapid! Rapid! …and systematic

HLWIKI's page on Rapid Reviews

Evidence summaries: the evolution of a rapid review approach

National Collaboration Centre for Methods and Tools - Rapid reviews: Methods and implications

What is a rapid review? A methodological exploration of rapid reviews in Health Technology Assessments 

Feel free to add any sources / articles that you know of. This list doesn't capture everything but it may help if you want to know more about the topic.

Recently published Evidence Updates

The following Evidence Updates have recently been published, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Anaesthesia and Critical Care
Children's Health
Clinical Genetics
Diabetes
Emergency Medicine
Endocrinology
Gastroenterology
Hepatobiliary
Ophthalmology
Pain Management
Patient Safety & Risk
Rheumatology
Strategy
Stroke

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

Please complete this survey on Clinical Librarian provision in the UK

In 2004 and 2005 Linda Ward conducted a survey of the provision of UK Clinical Librarians, this new survey is intended to update our view of Clinical Librarians in the UK and to see what new and similar roles are now in place. All the information you send to us will be kept confidential unless you agree otherwise.

Here's a link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WQW9RLH and please do share with your colleagues!

HDAS improvement project feedback required by 27th November

Work has begun to improve the HDAS service, specifically its performance and stability. NICE have created a space to share information and provide feedback.

FAQs about this project and an early prototype are available to view here: http://labs.nice.org.uk/hdas-redevelopment 

Feedback can also be given at the above link but the deadline for the first round of comments closes on Friday 27th November, so be quick!

Project updates will be posted regularly on the above link and will also be shared on the library email lists.

Literature search tips: saving those search blocks

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian Service Manager, Pip Divall:

If you run literature searches that include a regular topic or block of terms, for example, all terms relating to paediatrics, save those terms or block of the search to use next time. Also, don't forget to share those search strategies with colleagues too!

There's a great article on saving search  here: http://eahil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/11-14-de-Jonge.pdf

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page and catch up on our previous literature search tips here.

Literature search tips: Yale MeSH Analyzer for ninja systematic review librarians

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian, Sarah Sutton:


Yale have created a MeSH Analyzer, which allows you to design and refine searches. It shows you how key articles are indexed by retrieving the article metadata and presenting it in an easy-to-read grid.

To use the tool, paste up to 20 PubMed identifier/PMIDs into the text box and click on, "Go". MeSH Analyzer will retrieve the article data from PubMed and present it in a grid in either HTML or Excel. 

There are options to customise the tool and you can also do the analysis in one step by installing a browser on your toolbar.

This tool is great for finding MeSH terms, term variants and give you an insight into why some articles are retrieved and others are not.


We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page and catch up on our previous literature search tips here.

Free subscription to MLA discussion list!

Did you know that there is a MLA special interest medical libraries discussion list? It is free and available to all, including non MLA members.

Before subscribing you must read the discussion list guidelines first, which are available here: http://www.mlanet.org/p/cm/ld/fid=377 Online subscription is available here: http://list.uvm.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=MEDLIB-L&A=1

This is great for those who are not currently a member of MLA but would like to be kept in the loop of medical library discussions.

Also, don't forget anyone can join the clinical librarian mailing list for free too!
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=CLIN-LIB

PROSPERO: international prospective register of systematic reviews

PROSPERO is an international register of systematic reviews. It is produced by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) at the University of York and it holds over 10,000 published records.

PROSPERO increases transparency and helps reduce unplanned duplication by allowing readers to compare published research and prospectively submit systematic review protocol details first.

Find out more here: http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/

Literature search tips: how to translate from OVID to EBSCO

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian Service Manager, Pip Divall:

Use this handy help sheet for translating a search from OVID to EBSCO:
http://support.ebsco.com/downloads/printeddocs/en_cinahl_ehosttransition_helpsheet.pdf

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page and catch up on our previous literature search tips here.

Literature search tips: HDAS de duping

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian, Sarah Sutton:

As the HDAS de duping isn’t working, you can either export your search results into reference management software and then dedupe in that (with the drawback that it takes out most of the nice links to full text etc that HDAS includes). Or my plan b. You copy your results onto the HDAS clipboard, then sort it by title (clipboard still lets you do that) and then whiz down the list selecting any duplicates and then remove them by clicking remove from clipboard. Make sure you set the results to not show the abstracts and to have 50 results per page, to make this a bit less appallingly boring at least. I don’t mind doing this for 250 results but more than that would involve me being very devoted to the clinician in question.

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page. Catch up on all our literature search tips here.

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to 'A day in the life of a clinical librarian' blog series. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.


This month we're interviewing our Clinical Librarian Services Manager.

Who are you and where do you work?

I’m Pip Divall and I work as the Clinical Librarian Service Manager at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. I’m mainly based at the Glenfield Hospital Library, but I work across all three hospital sites in Leicester. I manage the team of Clinical Librarians and CISS Officers, as well as providing a service to my dedicated clinical teams.

How long have you been there?

I started as a Clinical Librarian at UHL in October 2004, but had been in a clinical librarian role at George Eliot Hospital for 7 months prior to taking up the post in Leicester. Before that, my first professional role was an Assistant Librarian in a mental health trust in Staffordshire.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?

I first learned of Clinical Librarianship while I was writing my MA dissertation at Loughborough University. A friend was doing her project on the topic and it sounded like a really exciting and inspiring job to do. I didn’t really think much more of it until it came to applying for jobs when the course ended, and I was lucky enough to find myself in the NHS and found that I really enjoyed enquiry work and literature searching. I realised later I’d been doing Clinical Librarianship-lite anyway, as I always sent a summary of my results along with the actual results. 

What does an average day at work involve?

An average day involves meeting with clinicians, either for training or project work. I’m involved in several systematic reviews for the orthopaedic team at the moment. As I manage the team, there are often one-to-ones and working on “managery” things. I’m now on the Knowledge for Healthcare Workforce Development Working Group, so that adds to the “managery” thinking.  I’m also heavily involved with the training programme for the library and education department. I’m really enjoying the use of games to teach information literacy at the moment. Most days I’ll be squeezing in a literature search! 

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?

I’m fascinated by perfumes, so if I weren’t a librarian, I would love to be a perfumer.

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself

You can have both:

I was once on an episode of Bargain Hunt.

I do a great line in cheese related humour:

What kind of cheese do you use to hide a horse?

Mascarpone.

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have recently been published, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Breast Cancer
Cardiac Surgery
Children's Health
Colorectal Surgery
Corporate Nursing
Emergency Medicine
Infection Control
Musculoskeletal
Older People's Health
Palliative Care
Renal Services
Respiratory Medicine
Urology
Vascular Surgery

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

EAHIL+ICAHIS+ICLC Report, 10-12th June 2015 Edinburgh

Wednesday 10th June 

ICLC 

Our conference was held on the morning before EAHIL proper started, in one of the lecture theatres in Appleton Tower, which was the main base for the Workshop. 

See here for links to presentations - https://eahil2015.wordpress.com/iclc-session/ 

*** Main take home messages – if you are running a conference elsewhere make sure that everything is working from a IT/technical point of view and ensure all PPTs are loaded to the system before you start.***

EAHIL Workshop

It started with a plenary from Professor Hazel Hall on the topic of introducing a research-minded approach to professional practice.  She discussed the DREaM project which aimed to develop a formal UK-wide network of Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers. See here for link to her presentation - http://www.slideshare.net/HazelHall/incorporating-a-researchminded-approach-to-professional-practice.  She then formally declared that EAHIL 2015 Workshop was open by ringing a bell.

I then attended a workshop session ran by Margaret J. Foster entitled Introduction to systematic reviews and the role of the librarian.  This was a really useful and inspiring session and she talked in great depth about her work supporting researchers with systematic reviews. There wasn’t all that much hands on work and we ran out of time, but she gave us quite a good overview of her SR methods and how she works with researchers.

See link to her slides here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ymm48glouvdf98h/AADLetMMEKdah7RCqDlK8s1Za?dl=0# 

The day ended with the welcome reception (cheese, biscuits and prosecco) held in the beautiful Playfair Library Hall of Old College, University of Edinburgh.  We heard a number of speeches from various colleagues of the organisers, and felt warmly welcomed to a very sunny Edinburgh.  

Thursday 11th June

The second day began with plenary talks from Dr Alison Brettle and Dr Johanna Rivano Eckerdal, who both discussed research methods.

The first workshop I attended was on Social network analysis – what, where and how? Louise Cooke from Loughborough University ran the session which I found really interesting.  She talked about how networks exist and form within groups and gave details of free software that you can download to play around with analysing networks.

Link to slides here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/orlwb6f2ebit1f8/AACLMGkqkrWgnWGWu0MRY49Va?dl=0

I then went to the Using action research in practice workshop ran by Hannah Spring. What she described seemed a bit like reflection, but more formal.  They discussed it in terms of making sense of your own practice to gain a deeper understanding and justification of what you are doing.

Slides here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6mnt2xlurakei0j/AADY-_kAZ-IeVRVudoIt7fZRa?dl=0 

The afternoon was taken up with the session on Sharing literature search blocks: help develop a cooperative solution.  I’m not sure how much I really got out of this. It did raise an interesting question though in terms of whether we as a team should or could save some search blocks on some of our regular topics.

Link to slides here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2gvl3okbaltadwy/AAC1GPHaR5vM1SDj0ZImlT3Aa?dl=0

The Gala dinner was held in the evening at the National Museum of Scotland. It was a lovely meal and then a ceilidh, which I managed to avoid getting involved in thankfully.

Friday 12th June 

The last workshop session I attended was run by an external company called Seeing Stones, headed up by Iain Davison on Communicating with hard to reach audiences.  This was really useful, very interactive and I could really relate it to my everyday work in terms of communicating with non-traditional library users. It touched on finding out what your core values are as a first point of call, as when you know what you believe in decisions become a lot easier. 

Link to slides here - https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y6yjvxwvy4c1gic/AAAu1PSOcOSYMK3urWU5p_oWa?dl=0 

Other useful links:

• JEAHIL – Memories from Edinburgh issue -  http://eahil.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/journal-3-2015-link-web1.pdf 

• EAHIL Workshop website with presentations to download - https://eahil2015.wordpress.com/workshop-presentations-for-download/ 

Handy website by the US National Cancer Institute

Check out this very handy website prepared by the US National Cancer Institute. It has information for patients and professionals. Only thing to look out for is that it shows you only one section of each article at a time, so don’t think “oh that’s a bit brief”, there is a navigation list on the left of each article and you can go on to the next section by clicking that or by clicking on an arrow at the bottom of the page. Here is the section on Palliative or supportive care:

http://www.cancer.gov/publications/pdq/information-summaries/supportive-care

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to 'A day in the life of a clinical librarian' blog series. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.


This month we're interviewing Lisa Lawrence from Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Who are you and where do you work?

I'm Lisa Lawrence and I work as a Clinical Librarian at Derby Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. I'm based at the Royal Derby Hospital, but work cross-site, particularly as one of my CL departments, Dermatology, is based at our other site, London Road Community Hospital.

How long have you been there?

Longer than I care to remember! I've been in this post for nearly 10 years, and have worked for the Library & Knowledge Service here for 13 years. Before that I worked in a further education library, and before that I was in public libraries... (and have the storytime for the under 5s dressing up pictures to prove it!) I started in libraries after completing my undergraduate degree in Literature and History, and I guess I developed a taste for it, so have stayed in the profession, since qualifying with a Masters degree in Library & Information Studies.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?

Never a dull moment! Every day is different. You never know what you're going to be asked, you get to meet so many people and learn so much - I enjoy searching for information and like to find answers to questions...  I also get real job satisfaction in doing my bit to ensure that our patients get the best evidenced care. You're part of great multidisciplinary teams, where eveyone is valued for their specific skillsets. We all contribute to providing the best quality healthcare for our patients. There's real people, with real outcomes on the end of everything we do. You can't really get better than finding out that something you've done has assisted one of your clinical colleagues to improve the treatment of a patient...

What does an average day at work involve?

Erm...  no such thing as an average day! Usually it will involve checking emails, doing some literature searching, going to a clinic or an MDT/education meeting, catching up with curent awareness, doing some more literature searching, checking emails again, providing some training or going to journal club, doing some more literature searching, answering an urgent telephone enquiry, and of course, doing some more literature searching...

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?

Lottery winner!!  Feet up - cocktail in hand!
But seriously -  I've always had a bit of a hankering to be a novelist...

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself

My jokes are generally awful, so a non-work fact it is!
I'm a committee member of the Derbyshire Amphibian and Reptile Group - we're dedicated to doing our best for native amphibians and reptiles in our area. I've previously been scared of snakes and I never ever thought I'd take a liking towards toads, newts, lizards and snakes, but now I can't seem to get enough of them! Every spring you'll find me working hard on Toads on Roads crossing patrols, getting toads safely to their breeding ponds. I've got a real soft spot for our toads...

Call for abstracts at the joint meeting of medical librarians and health information professionals!

It's abstract submission time for the largest gathering of medical librarians and health information professionals in the world at the joint meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA), the Canadian Health Libraries Association/Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada (CHLA/ABSC), and the International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC)! The theme of our meeting is:

You can submit a presentation, lightning talk or poster, on any research you have done or project you have worked on. We are keeping the submission process very open so that any interesting topic can be included. You don’t need to include finished results in your abstract, those can follow later.
Please submit your abstract by September 15th 2015, guidance and a lot of other helpful information below:

https://www.mlanet.org/meetings/am/mla16/index.html

Clinical Librarian Vacancy

Opportunity to join the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (Part Time)

We have a wonderful team and the role is hugely rewarding.

A chance to join University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust's ground-breaking Clinical Librarian Service. Become a part of one of the UK's longest running Clinical Librarian teams in this part time role, working 22.5 hours per week, supporting a variety of clinical areas and providing the best available evidence to assist patient care and world class research.

Further details available here: NHS Jobs Clinical Librarian Vacancy

STUDY DAY: Guidelines – what’s new and the librarian’s role.

A study day for health librarians on what’s new in supporting the production and management of guidelines for your organisation and how librarians can contribute.

Do you want to make your service indispensable to your organisation - supporting guideline production and management is a good area where libraries can extend their influence and value to their organisations. We are running a study day for Health Librarians on Tuesday 3^rd November 2015 on Guidelines – what’s new and the librarian’s role.

To be held at The Clinical Education Centre, Glenfield Hospital, Groby Road, Leicester, LE3 9QP, United Kingdom.

Booking forms and further information available here

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have been published this month, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Anaesthesia & critical care
Cancer & Haematology
Cardiac Surgery
Cardiology
Emergency Medicine
Gastroenterology
Hepatobiliary
Ophthalmology
Pain Management
Patient and Public Involvement
Patient Safety & Risk
Rheumatology
Strategy

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to 'A day in the life of a clinical librarian' blog series. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.

This month we're interviewing one of our Clinical Information Search Service Officers.

Who are you and where do you work?

Hi, I’m Joanna and I’m a Clinical Information Search Service (CISS) Officer at the University of Hospitals Leicester. I am part of a job share and work 3 days a week supporting the Clinical Librarian Service across the 3 UHL sites, although I'm mainly based at the Royal Infirmary and Glenfield hospitals.

How long have you been there?

I have been here for 2 ½ years. Previously I was an Assistant Librarian at a corporate law firm in London for 5 ½ years.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?

I have worked in various sectors before moving to the NHS, including a university, government department and several law firms. What attracted me to clinical librarianship was the variety of work involved and knowing that the work we do feeds back into furthering medical knowledge and improving patient care.

What does an average day at work involve?

Starting with a strong cup of tea, I usually look through my emails first and prioritise jobs for the day. These jobs can range from locating articles to producing and circulating Evidence Updates on various topics to managing our blog, website and twitter profile and taking minutes at our team meetings. As my role is aimed at providing support to the clinical librarians, I also often pick up any literature searches when the team is inundated with requests and help organise study days too.

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?

If I could be both a professional, expert gardener and some kind of designer, that would be amazing. Or if money wasn’t an issue, I’d love to run a shop that runs craft courses by day and turns into a gig venue by night for all my favourite bands to play at!

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself

Way back I did a course on vinyl dj-ing and have dj’d at several venues in London. I once got so excited about getting to play the Rolling Stones (one of my favourite bands) that I managed to play the same song twice. Thankfully it went down pretty well.

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have been published this month, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Anaesthesia and Critical Care
Cancer and Haematology
Cardiology
Children’s Health
Clinical Genetics
Emergency Medicine
Gastroenterology
Hepatobiliary
Ophthalmology
Pain Management
Patient and Public Involvement
Renal
Rheumatology
Stroke
Urology

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

Literature search tips: exporting references for systematic reviews

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian Service Manager, Pip Divall:

Quite often teams ask me for results in a spreadsheet because they are doing a systematic review. An easy way to do this is to export the references out of Refworks into Excel.

For further guidance, check out the following guidelines out and don't forget that Refworks dedupes results too!

http://refworksatunmc.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/can-i-create-excel-table-from-my.html

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page and catch up on our previous literature search tips here.

UHL Writing Club, Tuesday 23rd June

The next UHL Writing Club will be looking at tips on publishing & presenting audits. The guest speaker will be Dr Amit Mistri & the Audit Team. This session would be of particular interest to Junior Doctors, but is open to all UHL staff who are interested in writing for publication.

It will be held in the Odames Library meeting room from 1-2pm on Tuesday 23rd June.

To reserve your free place, contact Pip Divall.

International Clinical Trials Day - 20 May 2015

As part of International Clinical Trials Day 2015 on Wednesday 20 May, the Children’s Research team (part of the Clinical Research Network: East Midlands) are promoting children’s research at Leicester's Hospitals.

 The #whywedoresearch campaign will be promoted via their brand new twitter page @UHLkidsResearch.

Now Fully Booked

Medical Terminology Training

Beverley Walsh, of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, has kindly agreed to come and run her course on “Medical Terminology” for us here at University Hospitals of Leicester. The date is set for Tuesday 30^th June, from 10.30-2.00, at the Odames Library, Victoria Building, Leicester Royal Infirmary, LE1 5WW .

The UHL Clinical Librarian Service are covering the cost of the session, and Primal Pictures (producers of Anatomy.tv) will provide a light lunch on the day.

The session will cover the basic building blocks of medical terminology, and Beverley has successfully run this course in several parts of the UK. I envisage that this session will be most useful to those staff who are new to the NHS and those less confident in the use of medical terminology.

We have 7 places to offer to our East Midlands colleagues on this session, free of charge, on a first come, first served basis. To book a place, please email pip.divall@uhl-tr.nhs.uk

MLA '16 - Press Release
Toronto, 13-18 May 2016 #mlanet16

Call for Submissions

Download the full Call for Submissions (includes both English and French).
The 2016 MLA/CHLA/ABSC/ICLC Joint Planning Committee invites submissions for papers, posters, lightning talks, and special content sessions that support the theme, “Mosaic: Be Part of the Big Picture.”
Plan to submit your structured abstract for your research project or program description in September 2015, using the guidelines at research.mlanet.org. New to this year’s process, authors will rank how they would prefer to present their content: paper, poster, or lightning talk. Abstracts not accepted to a first choice will be considered for second and third choices.
New this year are special content sessions. Groups—such as sections, chapters, special interest groups (SIGs), or other groups—are invited to design engaging 1.5-hour-long sessions (for example, invited speakers or panel presentations). Proposals for special content sessions are due in September 2015, and these submissions should not duplicate content submitted as paper sessions, poster sessions, or lightning talks. MLA’s Research Section will award prizes for the best research-based papers and posters. Full information on the submission process, programming types, instructions for proposals for special content sessions, and criteria used to assess abstracts and proposals will be available on MLANET in May 2015.

For more information, see https://www.mlanet.org/meetings/am/mla16/index.html

Plan to attend the largest gathering of medical librarians and health information professionals in the world at the joint meeting of the Medical Library Association (MLA), the Canadian Health Libraries Association/Association des bibliothèques de la santé du Canada (CHLA/ABSC), and the International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC)!

Review of our study day

Thanks so much to Phillip Barlow from Imperial College London for his great write up of our 'Make your service visible and essential to users' study day, held on the 23rd April.

If you were unable to attend, it's worth having a read. His blog post can be found here.

We will be making the presentations from the day publicly available on our website soon, so stay tuned!

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to our third post in our brand new blog series, A day in the life of a clinical librarian. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.

This month we've had the pleasure of interviewing one of our very own clinical librarians.

Who are you and where do you work?

I’m Louise Hull, a Clinical Librarian at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.  My main base is Glenfield Hospital but I travel across to the other sites as needed.


How long have you been there?

I have been in this role for seven years and have worked from the Trust for nearly 13 years in total.


What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?

I have always enjoyed searching for information and I really liked the fact that your work may have a positive impact on patient care. My role has evolved now and I support a range of staff in both clinical and managerial roles, which is really interesting.

What does an average day at work involve?

I work Wednesday – Friday, so Wednesday mornings often involve a lot of catching up on emails and prioritising my workload for the next few days. I’ll be going through my email alerts from various organisations and assigning relevant items to the evidence updates I lead on. Literature searching and various meetings are also a regular occurrence!

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?

I always wanted to be a Sport’s Psychologist (my first degree was in Psychology). Or if I won the lottery I’d open an ice cream parlour or a deli.

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself

I have a two year old daughter, a three year old Labrador and a four year old son. So sometimes it is nice to come to work for a bit of peace and quiet!

Literature search tips: PROSPERO database

This week’s literature search tip comes from our Clinical Information Search Service Officer, Joanna Yeoman:

If you're assisting with a systematic review and need to find out whether the review has already been written, use PROSPERO database to check.

PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care and is available here.

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below or on our Twitter page.

Literature search tips - InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group (ISSG) website

This week’s literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian, Sarah Sutton and our Clinical Information Search Service Officer, Joanna Yeoman:

The InterTASC Information Specialists' Sub-Group (ISSG) website is a useful resource for search filters.

The Search Filters by Study Design provides suggestions for filters in different database, so if you were looking for ways to search for systematic reviews, this would give you some examples.

There is also a whole load of useful information, such as methods for developing your search.

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have been published this month, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Anaesthesia & critical care
Cardiology
Emergency Medicine
Gastroenterology
Hepatobiliary
Ophthalmology

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter to find out when an evidence update is hot off the press!

Register for MLA'15, Librarians Without Limits
At MLA ’15, “Librarians without Limits,” in Austin, you will network with 2,300 friends and colleagues who share your passion for the value of using health information to improve health and get reenergized with new ideas and understanding of new opportunities. There is no limit to what you can learn, including:

• latest trends in technology
• best practices in service
• effective leadership techniques
• ways to enhance intellectual growth
• ideas to improve services at your library
• new, innovative resources for efficiency and cost savings

 Build your case to attend the meeting by focusing on these and many more benefits.

Online Meeting Scheduler
MLA's online scheduler will help you navigate the meeting: http://www.eventscribe.com/2015/MLA/. It includes an online program, exhibit hall floor plan, lists of exhibits and lists of attendees. Note, access to My Plan and Online Meeting Content (session recordings) is limited to only paid annual meeting registrants. If you would like access, signup for e-Conference Registration (package D) at http://mla15.meeting.mlanet.org/registration/how-register. For information about Online Meeting Content, see: http://mla15.meeting.mlanet.org/register/econference.html.

MLA '15 Mobile App
MLA will be launching the MLA '15 mobile app in the coming weeks. Attendees will be able to search exhibitor listings in a similar way as they currently do on the MLA online scheduler. Stay tuned for more information on the MLA '15 mobile app.

Welcome Reception / Opening of Exhibits - Celebrating Austin’s Culture
The theme of Saturday night's opening of the exhibit hall will be "Celebrating Austin's Culture." Whether dressing like your favorite Austin City Limits performer or kickin’ back in your boots and bandana, the Opening Reception will celebrate all that is Austin – the live music capitol of the world.  Attendees are invited to enjoy the flavors of southwest food and some local music while reconnecting with colleagues old and new. Exhibitors are encouraged to incorporate the theme into their opening night plans.

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to our second post in our brand new blog series, A day in the life of a clinical librarian. This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.

This month we've had the pleasure of interviewing a lovely, clinical librarian from Australia!

Who are you and where do you work?
Hello! I’m Catherine Voutier and work full time at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The RMH is a large metropolitan hospital operating over 2 campuses. It has almost 1000 beds, specialty clinics, a major trauma service, and the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service.  It is the oldest hospital in Victoria, opening just after the Gold Rush.

How long have you been there?
I have just started my fifth year here. I joined the Health Sciences Library team on the 14th February 2011. I’m just at the cusp of that "been here forever" and newness stage.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?
I was attracted to the varied activities that clinical librarians were involved in. A much more expanded role than the standard medical librarian role. There are not many clinical librarians in Australia – it is still a role that is gaining acceptance.

What does an average day at work involve?
The average day involves a journal club, perhaps a patient discharge/outpatients audit meeting, meeting with hospital staff to discuss projects, database searching, and teaching and planning education activities. My first ward round experience will be in August. Here at RMH, rounds are called ward service. And of course, every day involves sending and reading email!

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?
Well now, this is a tough question! When I was a child I thought I would like to be a plumber. I thought that was a sensible option (I must have been about 8 at the time). My first job out of university was at an art conservation laboratory and I loved it. I wanted to be a conservator but there was no training in Australia at the time. Now, I think I might have ended up being a museum curator or working in the event industry.

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself
I like to make my Mum laugh. She bought a book not long ago that had the title “What I know for Sure” so I just had to ask her, is it a big book or a small book? Tee hee!!

HDAS - transition from OVID to ProQuest for the Medline and PsycINFO databases

From the 1st April Medline and PsychINFO databases will move from OVID to ProQuest. All saved searches and alerts should be downloaded and saved by 08:00 Monday 30th March. Further instructions can be found on the NICE website.

Recently published evidence updates

The following Evidence Updates have been published this month, detailing the latest evidence and literature.

Breast Cancer
Cardiac Surgery
Colorectal Surgery
Corporate Nursing
Emergency Medicine
Family Planning
Infection Control
Musculoskeletal
Neonatal
Older People's Health
Palliative Care
Respiratory

UHL Clinical Librarian, Sarah Sutton, is interested in hearing other views on the issue of using 'NOT' and posed the following question:  

Dear All

I am searching in Ovid as I expect to find thousands of results and this is my search to exclude purely children studies, line 53 is the results of my topic search and I am trying to limit to adult studies only. I realise this will mean I am limiting my results to articles tagged as being about adults.

Can you all think of any other reason  I shouldn’t do it?

Best wishes

Sarah

54	exp Child/	1555371	Advanced
	55	exp Adult/	5628420	Advanced
	56	54 not (54 and 55)	972652	Advanced
	57	53 not 56	12997	Advanced

Thanks to Judy Wright for her incredibly helpful response below:

Dear Sarah,

I do a very similar search when trying to limit results to adults.  I think the safest way is to remove the purely child studies as you have done. The exploded Child MeSH includes the heading ‘Child, Preschool’ but doesn’t include Adolescent/ or Infant/ MeSH headings. If you want to include these age groups in your child search you could do the following

1         [result of topic search]

2         (exp Child/ OR Adolescent/ OR exp Infant/) NOT exp Adult/))

3         1 NOT 2

This would retrieve the topic search but with any purely child or infant or adolescent studies removed.

This assumes the indexing is 100% accurate for those records that have a child heading attached. I guess there is always a chance that an indexer may assign the headings child/ and adolescent/ but not adult/ by mistake to a study of participants ranging from say 10 – 20. I’m not aware of any research to show this is a problem – but would be interested to hear if anyone has looked closely into this.

Best wishes

Judy

Judy Wright
Senior Information Specialist

http://medhealth.leeds.ac.uk/auhe/is

Literature search tips - saved search with an easily memorable name

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian Service Manager, Pip Divall:

If there’s something you’re searching on regularly, e.g. I do loads for anti-TNF drugs, and also ultrasound guided regional anaesthesia, then set up a saved search with an easily memorable name and run that at the right time in your strategy.

We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share your thoughts in the comments field below.

The UHL writing club is back!

The UHL Writing Club is returning on Thursday 5th February from 1 - 2 pm. It will be looking at writing case reports, with Damian Roland as guest speaker. This session would of particular interest to UHL Junior Doctors, but is open to all UHL staff who are interested in writing for publication.

More details can be found on our website here.

A day in the life of a clinical librarian

Hello and welcome to our brand new blog series, A day in the life of a clinical librarian! This is a monthly series sharing what a day at work for those working in clinical librarianship actually looks like and finding out about the person behind the job.

We're kick starting the series with our newest member of the UHL Clinical Librarian team!

Who are you and where do you work?
I’m Hannah Beckitt and I am a Clinical Information Search Service (CISS) Officer.  I am part of a job share and work 2 days a week supporting the Clinical Librarian Service across the 3 UHL sites, although I can usually be found at Glenfield Education Centre.

How long have you been there?
I am the newest member of the team, joining in June 2014.

What attracted you to Clinical Librarianship?
I enjoy roles that allow me to provide an efficient service, and I felt I had skills in using the internet to find information that matched the specification of this role.  I also have experience of working in the NHS which is helpful for this role. My background is in Speech and Language Therapy, and I have a Masters in Clinical Communication Studies.  My course developed my understanding of medical terminology and research methods, both of which are extremely useful for this job.  I have often reflected that I would have liked to train as a librarian and I am now able to work in this field, albeit in a supportive role.

What does an average day at work involve?
I respond to requests from health professionals for articles that they have been unable to access themselves.  We check a number of sources to see if we can obtain it electronically, complying with copyright law, and with the least amount of cost to the library.  My job also involves creating bimonthly ‘Evidence Updates’ (previously known as Current Awareness Bulletins) for 11 clinical areas including Musculoskeletal, Urology, Pain and Stroke.  These are circulated via email, uploaded to our website and publicised via social media.  I also provide general admin support to our Clinical Librarians e.g. organising registration and payments our study days; carrying out literature searches when needed; updating our website with a ‘publication of the week’ chosen by one of our Clinical Librarians

If you weren’t a Librarian, what would you be?
I really like the blend of my two current jobs, I have the benefits of working for myself and working for an organisation.  I also enjoy the fact that I can switch off when I go home from this job! I get satisfaction from helping people and providing a good service.  I hope the patients in the hospital benefit from the small part that I play in providing up-to-date information quickly to the healthcare professionals that are treating them.  If I had to choose a completely new job I might go for floristry, but somewhere warm!

Tell us a joke or a non-work fact about yourself
I have two daughters, two labradors and two guinea pigs! I am rubbish at jokes!

Evidence-Based Health Care Career Enhancement Scholarship

Evidence-Based Health Care Career Enhancement Scholarship – helping gifted individuals advance their skills in evidence-based health care and improve practice.

The Postgraduate Programme in Evidence-Based Health Care is offering a Career Enhancement Scholarship to one exceptional applicant per course as detailed below. The Scholarship will cover the full cost of tuition fees (£1,970) but excludes the cost of travel, accommodation and subsistence. The student is expected to cover these costs. For further details on how to apply please follow the links below.

Clinical Trial Management, 27 April - 1 May 2015
Developing best practice for the management and delivery of clinical trials
Full details and information on how to apply can be found on the course webpage - www.conted.ox.ac.uk/ctm

Practice of Evidence-Based Health Care, 18-22 May 2015 (A compulsory module for the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care)
Appraising the evidence to answer your clinical question
Full details and information on how to apply can be found on the course webpage - www.conted.ox.ac.uk/pebhc

Introduction to Study Design & Research Methods, 1-5 June 2015 (A compulsory module for the MSc in Evidence-Based Health Care)
Choosing and designing the most appropriate study to address your clinical research problem is paramount in generating the best evidence
Full details and information on how to apply can be found on the course webpage - www.conted.ox.ac.uk/isdrm

Literature search tips - developing your search strategy using Cochrane Library

This week's literature search tip comes from our Clinical Librarian, Sarah Sutton:


If you are searching in a new area its always worth having a look at the Cochrane Library and seeing if any of your concepts are covered in the search strategy for a Cochrane Systematic Review. Possibly best to make a list of your own ideas first, and then add any you find in the Cochrane. As once you have seen the Cochrane list it may push some other useful ones out of your head.

You probably won’t find your whole PICO but you might find one tricky aspect like “sedentary behaviour”! So you can just use any  terms you think are good from that bit of the Cochrane search, to stimulate your thinking for your search strategy.


We hope you like today's tip! Stay tuned for more and please do share or pop your thoughts in the comments field below.

Research minded workshop in June 2015

In collaboration with the International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists (ICAHIS) and the International Clinical Librarian Conference (ICLC), the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) will be holding a workshop in Edinburgh this summer. The workshop aims to provide healthcare librarians and information professionals with a better understanding and practice of research skills and methods.

Details of the workshop can be found here and on Hazel Hall's blog.

Health Librarian Workshop: Make your library service visible and essential to users

A workshop for health librarians on taking your services to your customers, with practical strategies and a chance to share good practice with colleagues.

If I Google your library service what will I find? Can I tweet an enquiry? Are you proactively sending me the information I need to do my job, be it as a clinician or a manager?

If these questions are playing on your mind then we can help find solutions. We are running a workshop for Health Librarians on 23rd of April 2015 on making your service visible and essential to your users.

Registration from 9
10.00 Welcome Sarah Sutton.  Clinical Librarian, University Hospitals of Leicester.   Short introduction on being loud and proud about your service.
10.15 Workshop on websites led by Stuart Glover.  Library Services Manager, University Hospitals of Leicester.
11.15 Break
11.45 Social Media workshop lead by Kieran Lamb. Senior Manager Evidence Services, North West CSU.
1.00 Lunch
2.00 Current Awareness Bulletins/Evidence Updates, presentations and workshops led by Steph Bradley. Primary Care Librarian, North Bristol NHS Trust and University Hospitals of Leicester Clinical Librarian Service.
3.50 Final comments and farewells.

To secure your place, please complete the form available on our website.

Health Education East Midlands (HEEM) is kindly sponsoring 15 places on this course for health library staff, including colleagues from public health departments, working in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire & Northamptonshire only. This means that the full cost of the course will be met by HEEM (excluding travel expenses). Allocation of the sponsored places will be on a first come first served basis. To request a HEEM place, please complete the form above and select the option to apply for a HEEM place.