Professional Development Award: Kelleen Maluski – University of New Mexico

Posted in: #CC/Academic List, #Health Interest List, #Health Sciences List, #Public/K-12 List, All Members

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Kelleen Maluski shares her experience attending a systematic review class that she was able to attend with a Professional Development award from Region 4.

I was extremely fortunate to be able to utilize the NNLM Region 4 award to attend a Library Juice Academy Systematic Review class taught by Stephanie Roth. This was a 4 week class that would help reintroduce me to best practices for systematic reviews after having not worked on them for quite some time. My learning objectives were threefold:

1. Gain experience in current technologies used for systematic reviews and ability to walk users through how to use them for their own systematic reviews.
2. Gain confidence in abilities to assist users with the entire systematic review process.
3. Receive and introduction to ideas on how to support a systematic review program in our current environment and with limited faculty.

I think most of us in the health sciences understand how important an education on systematic reviews is, even if we are not assisting with them on a regular basis. That’s why this class was a good way for me to stay up-to-date with new technologies and trends to assist in the profession.

As the Student Success and Engagement Librarian for a major academic health sciences library in New Mexico, I wanted this class to help me in becoming a valuable asset to the campus community by being better equipped to understand not just what was best practice for a systematic review, but also how to scaffold instruction to match the needs of our different levels of students, faculty, staff, and residents.

After having finished this class I can say that not only did it help me to meet the above stated goals, but it actually exceeded my expectations. I got hands on experience with expert commentary on how to structure the protocol and search process of a systematic review. In addition to that, we covered the entire review family. While I was familiar with other review types and approaches to them, this was a great refresher, and assisted with better understanding the requirements of the up and coming rapid scoping review.

Since taking the class I have already begun working with two different teams on rapid scoping reviews at my institution and have shared what I learned with my entire department and made my notes public for all at my library. This has led to robust conversations on how to update options like our workshops and research guides to better incorporate some of the materials learned through this class. It was also a fruitful experience in that my institution just purchased Covidence and through work in this class I was able to become much more expert on this program in a short period of time.

Though much of the class content was created specifically for the Library Juice Academy, and therefore it would be unethical for me to share such content widely, I did keep notes throughout my experience and am happy to share them here.

I am thankful to NNLM Region 4 for the chance to attend such robust professional development offerings and for their support (both in funding and collegiality and collaboration). The process to receive the award was extremely open and friendly, with questions being answered quickly and in significantly helpful ways, and I would highly recommend to others in the profession to take advantage of this amazing opportunity.

If you have a class in mind that you would like to attend, please reach out to us about our upcoming Professional Development Awards to help you with the costs associated.

Rml4@rml4.utah.edu