Through the Eyes of Our Researchers: Enhancing the Collaborative Role and Value of Librarians Within the Systematic Review Team

Objectives: Systematic review (SR) services based in a health care environment can benefit from ongoing assessment and evaluation. By performing regular assessments, librarians can uncover opportunities to add value to the SR process and research team. To determine areas for improvement, understand our researchers’ perceptions, and where librarians might further assist, we compared responses from two similar client satisfaction surveys (administered at a 3-year interval) sent to researchers who used the service. As SR services grow and evolve, so too should the tools used to evaluate them to better inform plans for service enhancements and crafting marketing messages.

Methods: In 2017 and 2020, client surveys were distributed to measure satisfaction with our Library’s SR service. Several questions from the 2017 survey were repurposed and administered to a similar audience, researchers who had submitted a request for support and published a SR in collaboration with their assigned librarian. Based on responses from the original survey, three new questions were added to the second survey to further explore our current SR process and identify tasks within the SR process where the researchers felt the librarian had the greatest impact or where they could have benefited from more support. A selection of first time and repeat service users were identified for interviews to tease out additional information about the librarian’s role. An analysis of both surveys and interviews reveals action items to enhance our service.


Results: The 2020 survey response rate was slightly larger, with 27 completed surveys (22 in 2017). Feedback was similar regarding client satisfaction, service recommendation, knowledge and quality of work completed by the librarian, and benefits from using the service. Both surveys’ findings revealed that some clients thought the SR process was slow, exacerbated by staff turnover or competing responsibilities. A new 2020 question highlighting researchers’ selection of where they saw the greatest impact of the librarian demonstrated that traditional librarian functions topped the list. Eleven client interviews were completed, uncovering other practical ways in which librarians could support SR teams.


Conclusion: The findings from both surveys and the interviews confirmed overall service value and benefits of working with an assigned librarian. The interviews provided specific ways that librarians could increase their collaboration on the SR team: proactively scheduling brief progress check-ins, setting expectations for obtaining full-text content (article management), ongoing identification/sharing of cutting-edge SR tools, developing a SR team task checklist, and simplifying the SR request process.