- Past Event
This one-day workshop is intended for intermediate to advanced academic and clinician researchers who are interested in taking their search strategies to the next level and who may be interested in undertaking a systematic review or an in-depth literature review.
Participants can expect to gain a better understanding of how to use a range of sources to best effect, how to structure searches more efficiently, how to focus searches on specific study designs and how to work more effectively with librarians and information specialists for more advanced, complex searches.
The workshop will be facilitated by Carol Lefebvre, an independent information consultant from the UK. The day will include a mixture of presentations, practical exercises and discussion, with plenty of time for questions and comments.
Workshop details:
Location: Ballarat (venue TBA)
Registration: CLOSED. Acceptance will be confirmed via an email once our administrator receives your registration.
Please note this is a free event however places are strictly limited.
Pre-requisites for attendance: Some experience of bibliographic database searching (such as PubMed) as this is not an introductory course on searching.
Program outline:
What can participants expect to gain from the workshop?: The workshop will include ‘hands-on’ exercises, so please bring your laptop (or equivalent).
Sources to search: PubMed and The Cochrane Library (CDSR and CENTRAL), ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO ICTRP
Designing a search strategy:
- PICO structure and beyond PICO
- sensitivity/precision/specificity
- search syntax such as Boolean searching and proximity operators
- controlled vocabulary (e.g. MeSH)
- free text searching – including synonyms and truncation
- simple text mining techniques for search term selection
- study design filters e.g. for RCTs and other study designs / types
- converting/adapting searches between different databases and interfaces
- search limits e.g. language and human
Documenting and reporting the search process:
About the presenter:
Carol Lefebvre is an independent information consultant and was previously the Senior Information Specialist at the UK Cochrane Centre from 1992 to 2012, where she was involved in founding The Cochrane Collaboration in 1993. She is Co-convenor of the Cochrane Information Retrieval Methods Group, serves on the Cochrane Methods Executive and is lead author on the searching chapter of The Cochrane Handbook.
Carol is a health sciences librarian by background and was the deputy librarian at the University of Oxford Medical School Library (UK) before joining Cochrane.
She has an MSc in Library and Information Science from the University of Loughborough (UK) and is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.
Since starting her own company in 2012, Carol now focuses on teaching and consultancy in information retrieval for evidence synthesis, such as systematic reviews, health technology assessment and guideline development. She is an active member of the UK InterTASC Information Specialists’ Sub-Group (ISSG) and the HTAi Interest Group on Information Retrieval. Carol is an Associate Editor of the journal Research Synthesis Methods.
