Workshops on systematic search of literature

Ana Utrobičić held two workshops on systematic search of literature for librarians.

On February 14, 2019, at the invitation of the University Library in Split, she held a workshop where she met high school librarians and special librarians with the fundamental principles of systematic literature search, according to Cochrane's methodology. She talked about sources that need to be considered when searching to avoid bias, the way of setting up the strategy, using special searchers and filters to search, storage of used strategies, exporting results to appropriate reference management software, and documenting and reporting all the searches that have been done. The workshop consisted of introductory lectures and exercises that included setting up research questions, defining key concepts, selecting appropriate search terms, and building a database strategy itself.

Lovela Machala Poplašen, president of the Commission for Medical Libraries of the Croatian Library Society, invited Ana Utrobičić to hold a workshop for her colleagues, medical librarians on March 12, 2019. The workshop was organized at the time of the meeting of the Commission so that librarians from different parts of Croatia can attend it. The workshop was held in the School of Public Health Andrija Štampar. The content of the workshop was similar to a workshop held in Split, with special emphasis on the specificities of medical literature research. On this occasion Ana Utrobičić also pointed to the many problems that arise in such complex searches, which are often associated with the characteristics of certain databases, but also with the process of procurement of electronic sources. Systematic search of the literature certainly goes beyond the scope of the usual user search and requires certain opportunities that must clearly be specified in the procurement process of the database.