Evidence Synthesis Methods Interest Group

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Charge: To promote and develop competencies around evidence synthesis including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, and other related methods of research synthesis, through activities such as: Facilitating discussion and peer-support; Creating and managing a resource page; Encouraging programming and publications around systematic reviews through ACRL.
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Oct 21 ESMIG Panel Session: When Evidence Synthesis Meets Collections, Contracts, and Algorithms

  • 1.  Oct 21 ESMIG Panel Session: When Evidence Synthesis Meets Collections, Contracts, and Algorithms

    Posted Sep 30, 2025 02:28 PM
    Edited by Erica DeFrain 28 days ago

    Dear ESMIG members,

    Please join us Tuesday, October 21 from noon - 1:00 CST in Zoom, https://go.unl.edu/esmig, for a panel discussion about how evidence synthesis is impacting library collections, licensing decisions, workflows, and vendor technologies. 

    Panelists:

    Cynthia Elliott, Collection Management Librarian and Unit Lead, Collection Services, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ.   
    Cynthia's research interests are practice-based and applicable, focusing on her work in acquisitions, collection management, collection development and assessment. Her research agenda includes acquisitions models; vendor/publisher relations with academic libraries, journal pricing, data acquisitions and licensing, and AI utilization in technical services. 

    Teresa Hazen, Department Head, Collection Services, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ.
    Teresa has been a department head at UAL for over 12 years, focusing on collections, digital preservation and production, web-scale discovery, electronic resources, and metadata. Before coming to UAL, she worked for many years in community college libraries as well as shorter stints in public and school libraries. Her research interests focus on AI applications in technical services (particularly working with metadata), demand driven acquisitions models, and web-scale discovery.
    Diana Doetzel, Regional Sales Manager at EBSCO, based in Phoenix, AZ.
    Diana has been part of the library industry since 1997, beginning with CD-ROM information sales prior to the rise of online databases. Over the years, she has worked with K–12, public, and academic libraries nationwide, providing solutions in library automation, research databases, workforce development, analytics, and authentication.
    Heather White, Senior Product Manager at EBSCO Information Services.
    Heather brings over two decades of experience in the library and information science field, including 17 years as an academic librarian and the past 4 years in SaaS product management. At EBSCO, she leads efforts to ensure that the needs of librarians are reflected in the design and development of the New UI, working closely with architects, UX designers, developers, and fellow product managers. Heather is currently focused on improving support for systematic reviews and evidence synthesis and has been conducting a global listening tour to gather insights from librarians around the world.
    Discussion topics will include:
    • Collections & resource access - impacts on licensing, acquisitions, and interlibrary loan
    • Organizational workflows & capacity issues
    • Balancing innovations in AI and proprietary algorithms with methodological requirements of reproducibility and transparency
    • Opportunities for collaboration between collections, ES providers, and vendors

    Looking forward to this discussion!

    Erica



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    ------------------------------
    Erica DeFrain
    Associate Professor
    University of Nebraska-Lincoln
    ------------------------------



  • 2.  RE: Oct 21 ESMIG Panel Session: When Evidence Synthesis Meets Collections, Contracts, and Algorithms

    Posted 28 days ago

    Thanks to everyone who was able to attend this informative conversation!

    As she discussed during the presentation, EBSCO Senior Product Manager Heather has shared all the Enhancement Requests that product management is tracking to make data-driven decisions about how best to support systematic review and evidence synthesis workflows. 

    If you would like your library attached to any of these ERs, you just need to submit a case through EBSCO Connect saying "please add my library to the following enhancement requests" citing the Service Issue numbers (SI#). This could be 1 case you submit with a list, then the Customer Support team can attach them to each one individually.

    Heather asks that you please work with your library team to determine who is best suited to submitting the request, and also cautions that the solutions they will offer on the New UI are not necessarily going to be identical to how the Classic UI met the need. While the titles of these ERs are asking for what Classic provided – they may resolve these ERs in slightly different, and hopefully better ways.

    Work in Progress – estimate to release between October – December 2025

    1. SI#2993751 Request the permalinks created by Share button in New UI to be the same as URL at the address bar (Bypass the OpenURL Connection page)
    2. SI#3840730: New UI - Remove character limit for saved search queries (Searches that are too long lead to Error: URI Too Long message)
    3. SI#2805227: Result List should also contain multiple search boxes maintaining the query entry state of Advanced Search
    4. SI#3609279: Ability to allow users to flip between single-line search and advanced search at any point while searching
    5. SI#1869903: Advanced Search - Add Guided Style (3) Search Boxes to Results List when user came from AS
    6. SI#3880442: New UI : Display Search History Above New UI Search Results

     

    For User Actions and Bulk Actions - timeline varies – some is in flight now, others are waiting for more customers to be attached

    1. SI#3155764: New EDS UI: Ability to move items in bulk from Saved to Projects
    2. SI#3665104: Email multiple results added to the "projects"
    3. SI#3830922: New UI - Deleting from the search history (Recent Activity)
    4. SI#2506297: Bulk Removal of Saved Results in New UI
    5. SI#3340477: New UI - Ability to Bulk Delete Items from Saved Folder
    6. SI#3730858: New EDS UI - Behaviours of result-list features like cite are inconsistent depending on when they are triggered.
    7. SI#3822317: New UI - Ability to save/email/cite/download more than 50, fewer than 25K results at a time (without using mass export feature)
    8. SI#1129279: Exporting search results - Allow users to select a range of results directly from the Results List.

     

    For Permalinks (as opposed to current durable URLs from the browser) – some to begin in January, release TBD, others are waiting for more customers to be attached

    1. SI#3741862: New UI - Ability to generate the permalink for the result list
    2. SI#108423: Request for Facet selections to be retained on Persistent Links
    3. SI#4139507 Persistent links/Saved searches from EBSCOhost must links to EBSCOhost not the highest-ranked FMO Profile
    4. SI#4091469 Auth 103 error when accessing a link created via the Sharing options (Issue with Inter-Site Linking via Share, Download, and Citation Features)

     

    For Systematic Reviews and Evidence Synthesis – some to begin in January, release TBD, others are waiting for more customers to be attached

    1. SI#3875342: Ability for combining searches using saved search history
    2. SI#4241973: Request for the Ability to Retain Logical Search Relationships in Projects
    3. SI#4202853: Ability to view records tied to a given search without re-running the search and incurring a new S# in search history
    4. SI#3730855: New EDS UI - Saved search execution unclear
    5. SI#4183342: Ability to sort saved searches/records alphabetically
    6. SI#3731053: New EDS UI - No numbering of results in Projects
    7. SI#4202956: My Dashboard - Request for a "Go to Page" Option for quicker navigation among records and searches spanning multiple pages
    8. SI#2638901: Add Suggest Subject Terms Feature to New UI
    9. SI#4252180: Ability to insert a line into the Search History or Saved Searches
    10. SI#1575695: Ability to share folder or project with other users.

     

    For the XB Title and Abstract field code (likely to release by January 2026)

    1. SI#3877146: Make the new TI/AB field code available for more databases beyond medical, Academic Search, and original in-scope EDS partner databases
      1. Include a note of which databases they want XB to be added to.
    2. SI#4073168: Rename XB Field Code to "Title OR Abstract" to Reflect Actual Boolean Logic

     



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    Erica DeFrain
    Associate Professor
    University of Nebraska-Lincoln
    ------------------------------

    Original Message