Last May, when I was preparing for my in-person interview for my current position, I was lucky to have the opportunity to talk with librarians at my graduate institution about questions I might be asked and topics that might come up during my interview. One of the main themes that came up in those preparation conversations was evidence synthesis, sometimes also known as knowledge synthesis.
If, like me a year ago, you’ve never heard that term before, it refers to systematically searching existing literature to find evidence and draw conclusions to answer a specific question. There are several types of evidence synthesis – some of the most common are systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and scoping reviews. This type of research started in the medical fields and has branched out from there into other areas, like education.
The librarians I talked to were right, and evidence synthesis was mentioned in my interview. I had done my homework and was able to speak to it enough, but one thing that had been clear from the research I did is that there would be a lot more for me to learn about this topic.
Teaching Evidence Synthesis (To My Fellow Librarians)
Fast forward to January 2026, and my library director sat down with me to talk about evidence synthesis work. One librarian on our team had been doing this work for several years and is very well-versed in it, but the rest of us were much newer to it and had varying degrees of knowledge. My library director explained that she wanted to us to be able to tell our departments that we could help with evidence synthesis projects starting in the Fall 2026 semester. That meant that we had about six or seven months to learn enough to feel comfortable guiding our students and faculty through the process. My director asked me to take on the project of developing a training program to teach all of us about evidence synthesis.
At that point, I had two main sources of knowledge about evidence synthesis: I had taken the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Evidence Synthesis Institute, which had been very helpful but was also, honestly, overwhelming; and I had joined a review project with some other librarians at Vanderbilt. While the knowledge from those things helped, I knew I was only scratching the surface of this topic – so essentially, I needed to come up with a way to teach my fellow librarians, along with myself, how to do evidence synthesis.
Six months later, I think our training program has been an overall success, although the main thing I’ve learned might be that there will always be more to learn about evidence synthesis. I don’t think our training program will ever be truly over – it may just be less intense in the coming months. But as we start to wrap up the first half of this year and look towards the fall semester, here are a few key takeaways that I think helped to make the training program work.
Get Feedback and Plan Ahead
Before I did anything else, I sent around an anonymous survey to the librarians at my library to gauge how much they already knew about evidence synthesis and how comfortable they thought they would be if a student walked into their office at that moment and asked for help with a systematic review. Unsurprisingly, our answers were varied, but a common theme that emerged was that while most of us had some knowledge of evidence synthesis, we were less confident about being able to put that knowledge into practice.
As a result, I set up our training program to be partially learning and information intake, partially exchanges with other librarians (more on that a few sections down), and partially hands-on work. In the external trainings and conversations about evidence synthesis that I’ve attended since January, being unsure of how to put what you’ve learned into practice has also been a common theme for librarians. If I hadn’t gotten this feedback at the beginning and planned out all of our biweekly meetings to make sure we had practice time in July, I might not have thought to include time for actual hands-on, practice learning.
Document and Save Everything
Evidence synthesis and systematic reviews are complicated forms of research. I knew that it was very possible our group of librarians could have a conversation about something, and then a year later, I might remember that conversation and want to go back and look at exactly what we discussed. As a result, from the very beginning of the training program, I made sure to create agendas and schedules in advance, record our meetings and discussions (with my colleagues’ knowledge and consent), and take meticulous notes during each training program interaction. All of those things are saved in an organized folder that’s shared with our team, and after every meeting, I re-share the folder with team members to ensure they have access to everything they might need.
Ask for Support When Needed
From the beginning, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to teach my colleagues all of this information on my own. As a result, I leaned on the experience of people around me to help when I needed to. I asked the librarian on our team who has the most experience with systematic reviews to lead a few of our sessions. He talked us through how to use Covidence and how to design a search string, which are both invaluable parts of evidence synthesis. I also asked the librarians at Vanderbilt’s Biomedical Library, several of whom have been doing evidence synthesis for 5 or 10 years, to do a Q&A session with us about their experiences and advice. That Q&A was also one of the most helpful things we did, and I’m so grateful to the Biomedical Library team for meeting with us. Finally, I also looked for external opportunities that we could use to enhance our training. In mid-June, most of us participated in the online Library Evidence Synthesis Services Symposium (LESSS), and gained a lot of valuable knowledge from those sessions.
I also want to add that doing this type of training program wouldn’t have been possible without the direction that I’ve received from my library director and the support I have from my colleagues. If my fellow librarians weren’t willing to show up, be dedicated, and learn a lot, our training program wouldn’t have made it past the first few weeks.
In July, I’ll re-survey my colleagues and figure out how we’re all currently feeling about evidence synthesis, what we think we can put into place for the fall, and where we need to continue learning. This will definitely be an ongoing learning situation – a “yes, and” training program instead of a checked box saying that our learning has been completed. But even though I haven’t officially asked yet, I feel good about saying that we all know a lot more than we did when the training program started at the beginning of this year. I look forward to what the next steps will be in all of us continuing to learn and grow with evidence synthesis.
