Farewell to the Systematic Review Workshop

For the past ten years, HSLS has hosted librarians from across the U.S. and Canada at our popular “Systematic Review Workshop: The Nuts and Bolts for Librarians.” This intensive 2.5-day workshop has been offered three times a year since November 2009, growing out of an internal working group to address the increasing number of requests from Pitt faculty for systematic reviews. Since then, the workshop has provided instruction to more than 700 participants, and brought rave reviews and recognition to HSLS.

The expert instructors who contributed to this course over the years included: Charlie Wessel, Mary Lou Klem, Rose Turner, Andrea Ketchum, Melissa Ratajeski, Linda Hartman (former HSLS Research and Instruction Librarian), Barbara Folb (now retired), and Ahlam Saleh (now at University of Arizona Health Sciences Library). Their expertise not only guided the development of our library’s systematic review service, producing over 116 publications co-authored by HSLS librarians in peer-reviewed journals, but has also contributed to similar success from workshop participants.

Charlie Wessel commented, “When we began this instruction in 2009, we thought we would offer the workshop once or twice, but demand and interest indicated a different story. We shared our knowledge and in return learned from the hundreds of participants from libraries across the country and Canada.”

Participants came from the disciplines of health sciences, engineering, physics, psychology, and business and represented a variety of organizations, including:

  • Government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Library of Medicine (NLM), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
  • Professional societies such as the American Academy of Ophthalmology, American Academy of Orthopedics, American Dental Association, Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, American Physical Therapy Association, and the Oncology Nursing Society
  • Hospitals and specialized care centers such as Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Henry Ford Health System, Kaiser Permanente, Mayo Clinic, Memorial Sloane Kettering, Cleveland Clinic, Boston Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and the City of Hope
  • Academic and health science libraries such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Southern College of Optometry, University of Toronto, University of New Brunswick, East Carolina University, Harvard, University of Texas, Texas Tech, University of Iowa, University of Tennessee, University of Washington, University of California, University of Wisconsin, Weill Cornell, Virginia Commonwealth University, and McMaster University
  • Nonprofits such as Rand Corporation and PATH (Program for Appropriate Technology in Health)
  • Corporations such as Clarivate Analytics, Elsevier, Inc., Seattle Genetics, MedImmune, LLC (now a part of AstraZeneca)

But all good things come to an end…the instructors decided that the workshop offered in July 2019 would be the last, and it was time to move on to new challenges.

Kudos for a job well-done!