Keynote: The case for Quality over Quantity

I will be presenting at the Health Science Librarians of Illinois (HSLI) Annual Conference on September 8 (https://hsli.org/conference/).

Evidence-based Librarianship and the Case for Quality over Quantity

Librarians have long played a critical role in teams that conduct systematic reviews. They partner with investigators to carefully construct search strategies that ensure all relevant studies are identified. To avoid publication bias, citations are hand searched and some teams even reach out to authors to identify “bottom drawer” literature, where a study has been conducted but not yet published. This example embodies the idea that getting the right data takes work but is critical to reach a valid conclusion. More importantly that easily accessible information can be misleading. This talk will provide a series of examples that illustrate when data quantity is no substitute for quality and how librarians are uniquely positioned within complex data ecosystems to ensure that the same biases that occur when using literature are not recreated or reinforced when researchers shift to re-using data.